


World's Biggest World II: I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper

by Mallory Klohn (malloryklohn)



Category: Queer as Folk (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-10
Updated: 2009-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:24:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malloryklohn/pseuds/Mallory%20Klohn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The road trip madness continues.  Vince picks up a pregnant hitchhiker and blows up the car (almost, any road) and Stuart says a lot of bad stuff that he means means means, absolutely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World's Biggest World II: I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper

**World's Biggest World II:**  
**_I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper_**  
by Mallory Klohn  


Wakefulness came quickly to Vince Tyler. He tended to be a bit dopey, mornings,  
especially if he'd had a shag the night before, but there were certain forces  
in the universe that were unstoppable, undeniable, veritable _juggernauts_, rolling merrily along and crushing all who dared to stand against them.

They were gods, elements, destiny: things so powerful that to even attempt  
to defy them would be insanity on a grand scale, but they were also Stuart  
Jones, who leapt out of bed each morning exactly as if he hadn't spent the  
previous night tempting mortality in a thousand ways, and who had no sympathy  
whatsoever for people who preferred to lie in.

"Oi, Vince," he said loudly, giving his friend a good thump in the back,  
"you can't sleep all bloody day. They've got a busload of Jehovah's Witnesses  
or some fucking thing coming in at half-three."

Vince squirmed away from him and pulled the blanket over his head, grumbling, "They have _not_. Even the Jehovah's Witnesses want no part of this godforsaken hellhole."

"Seems to suit _you_ well enough," said Stuart. He yanked the blanket down to Vince's waist.

"Fuck off," Vince said, tugging the blanket back and burrowing in deeper.  
The room hadn't seemed so cold the night before; what with one thing and  
another it had been almost balmy, actually, but it was Ice Station bloody  
Zebra now.

That was backwoods motels for you; it wasn't enough to let the cleaning slide,  
it wasn't enough to allow the rooms to deteriorate so badly that they had  
all the charm of a condemned orphanage. No, the owners of such establishments  
weren't content till they'd turned off the heat at night and dressed their  
fragrant mattresses with thin blankets, as well. If a single one had been  
in possession of anything resembling a slogan, it likely would've been something  
like Get Out-- And Don't Come Back.

"You can't start bugging _me_ just 'cause you've shagged the only other hearing person within a thousand-mile radius."

It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it instantly; provoking Stuart  
was never a good idea, especially when he wanted something, but Vince wasn't  
sure exactly _how_ he'd slipped up till he felt Stuart slide down on  
the bed, spooning up behind him. It was too late, then; Stuart draped his  
arms around him and rubbed up against him, sighing contentedly.

"Could shag _you_," he said softly. "I was up half the night thinking about it."

"Give over," Vince said, elbowing him in the ribs.

"I _was_," he insisted. "I was thinking, if you turn on like that for a _wank_

..." Stuart coaxed him closer and licked the shell of his ear, making him  
shiver. "Could do me," he purred. "Shag me blind, good and hard, leave me  
with a limp and a smile, yeah, would you like that?"

For perhaps ten seconds, Vince stayed put and said nothing, helpless to do  
anything but absorb the feel of Stuart wrapped around him, a delicious, tingly,  
roaming sort of heat that stuttered along his nerves while Stuart thrust  
against him lazily, teasing his nipples, dropping light kisses on his shoulders.

He had no doubt that Stuart was only taking the piss, that he wanted Vince  
out of bed, that he'd abandoned bullying in favor of seduction to get the  
job done-- no one had ever accused him of being slow to make a decision--  
but Stuart was as hard as Vince himself was by then, and making sure that  
Vince could feel every inch, hear every slight sound he made when he moved  
just so...

But he'd see it through, if need be; Vince didn't doubt that, either. Shag  
or be shagged, Jehovah's Witnesses be damned. He wasn't a bluffer, Stuart.  
He was prepared to follow through with swift and merciless action on any  
threat he made. It was all the same to him, because he was a bastard and  
a dangerous, dangerous man, though hardly ever in a conventional sort of  
way.

This, in the end, was what finally spooked Vince; he was out of bed in an  
instant. Stuart started giggling before his feet even hit the floor.

"Get back here, you prick-teasing bastard," said Stuart.

"Fuck off." Vince stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door.

"Half an hour," Stuart called after him, "or I'm leaving you here."

"Be sure to send a postcard," Vince called back. "You _cunt_."

  


*** *** ***  


Vince glanced at Stuart and silently cursed his name for what seemed like the thousandth time that day.

No sooner had he got Vince out of the motel than he'd sweet-talked him into  
doing the driving, slipped into the passenger seat and fallen asleep.

Vince might've changed enough to drop everything and run off with Stuart like the alternate ending to _Casablanca_  
, he might've changed enough to nick a chocolate bar from a filling station  
shop and not let the guilt drive him to drop the $1.79 in the post the following  
morning, but he hadn't changed enough to wake his best mate out of sheer  
spite when the poor sod so clearly needed the rest.

Whatever he'd said, he _couldn't_ have been thinking about shagging Vince all night, but something had kept him up. He never _looked_

knackered, the way normal people did, but it wasn't like him to admit that  
he wasn't precisely on form, let alone beg off driving.

He had no objection to Vince's driving, even when it landed them at the threshold  
of a butter sculpture exhibition. It was just that he preferred to think  
himself invulnerable. It didn't matter that Vince knew better; it didn't  
matter that Vince knew _anything_, apparently. Vince didn't count. How many times had he heard _that_ rubbish, over the years? For how many different reasons?

Vince never saw things coming until they were right bloody there, that was his major problem.

He'd skived off in school most of the time, better things to think about,  
and where had that got him? A budding career as Manchester's best-looking  
stockboy. (Mind you, he'd never been particularly ambitious in that respect,  
but surely he could've managed something a bit more impressive. Suicide bombers  
had more admirers than Vince did.)

He'd quit his job, abandoned his flat, his friends, his family, he'd fled  
Manchester with Stuart, driven off into the sunset headed towards god knew  
what, and yeah, he'd been thinking about it for years, but that was the point,  
wasn't it? He'd only been _thinking_. The _doing_ of it had come  
over him like a sneeze: quick, easy, unexpected. Assistant manager one moment,  
fugitive the next. He hadn't had a clue.

Until he'd met Stuart that first time, in physical education of all things, he'd never even _suspected_ that he was gay. It had just _happened_  
. He'd walked into the locker room and found Stuart sitting on a bench by  
himself, fourteen years old and openly sizing up Lionel Calder's arse while  
Lionel had been bent over, rummaging through his knapsack.

Vince had stared at Stuart, then, unable to believe his own eyes-- to attract  
Lionel Calder's attention for any reason invited nothing but pain and degradation--  
and he'd been about to try to divert Stuart somehow when Stuart had looked  
up at him, caught him looking, really. Eyes dark, mouth parted just slightly  
while he'd licked his lips, he'd grinned at Vince, completely unrepentant,  
completely unconcerned, and in that moment he'd seemed like the only thing  
Vince had ever really _wanted_ in his life.

He'd had an awakening, some twat had told him, years later. A sodding _awakening_  
. It sounded like the sort of thing the yoga people did. Somehow having this  
particular term for it was even more humiliating than had been the realization,  
at age fourteen, that he'd known less than nothing at a time in his life  
when everyone else had already known everything.

Late bloomer, halfwit-- they both amounted to the same thing, in the end.

He'd never really believed that Stuart fancied him until he'd grabbed him  
the night before. Stuart had had men who were uglier than him, fatter, older,  
dumber, duller, he'd had men Vince wouldn't shag on a bet on the eve of Armageddon,  
but Vince himself? No chance.

Vince still had nights, often, when he caught Stuart at just the right instant,  
when he wanted Stuart so badly that he'd have given up everything he loved  
in life and consigned his soul to the fiery pits of hell for one night with  
him, one _hour_. For ages, on those nights, Stuart hadn't looked at him at all unless his glass was empty or he needed a lift.

But now he had. Out of nowhere.

That wasn't the way these things tended to go, was it? He was supposed to  
wait till Vince was on his deathbed, or one of them had to move to Jakarta  
and the other couldn't follow, or else he wasn't supposed to change his mind  
at all. Like practically everything else, unrequited love had rules.

A part of Vince dismissed the whole thing as a mercy fuck, just as he'd been  
dismissing Stuart's casual flirtation since they'd left Manchester, but however  
he felt about it, he knew better.

Nobody kissed like that just because they wanted to get it over with. Stuart  
could be a bastard, the worst person Vince had ever met, he could be so cruel  
and vicious that it stopped Vince's heart, but he didn't think Stuart would  
shag him just because he could, because he wanted to.

(That was daft, though, wasn't it? Stuart did things all the time just because  
he could and he wanted to, never looking any further ahead than the next  
thirty minutes. The streets of Manchester would've been paved with corpses  
if he _could've_ killed that many people and gotten away with it.)

It hadn't come out at all like Vince had thought it might. It'd been brilliant,  
yeah. Brilliant, fantastic, assorted other superlatives. He'd felt light-headed  
after, could barely think who he was or how he'd come to be naked and plastered  
against the wall at the Royal Canadian Museum of Appalling Bathrooms.

His whole body had been singing the praises of Stuart Jones, and why not? It'd been a _wank_, when all was said and done, just a _wank_  
, for Christ's sake, and with ten or twelve hours and a hundred miles between  
then and now, Vince had achieved some perspective on the subject, but at  
the time, it'd felt like Stuart had reshaped the fabric of the universe.

And what had Vince given him in return? A bit of a snog. A bald patch at  
the back of his head where he'd tugged Stuart's hair the hardest. A hand-shaped  
bruise on his wrist. He'd felt bad enough about all this before Stuart had  
coaxed him into bed and wrapped himself around Vince like his rich, chocolaty  
coating, but after?

After, Vince had fallen asleep. His last words to his best mate after their  
first real sex had been "Fuck off." He supposed that that was more or less  
right in keeping with the general shape of their friendship and so completely  
appropriate, but it offended his sense of occasion.

He'd always thought it would change everything, him and Stuart shagging,  
always. He'd never see Stuart again, or they'd be at each other's throats  
all the time, or else-- and this seemed so pie-in-the-sky that it embarrassed  
him to admit he'd thought about it-- they'd find some way to sort it out.

Stuart would stop crossing himself whenever someone thought him Vince's boyfriend,  
Vince would stop waiting for Stuart to realize that he was shagging a carnival  
freak and chuck him out, and both of them would stop circling each other  
like wary dogs whenever something threatened their truce, because they wouldn't  
_have_ a truce then, would they?

God knew what they were doing now.

He'd gone stomping off into the bathroom, completely narked at Stuart and  
deeply embarrassed, but by the time he'd come out again, he'd forgotten about  
it, and Stuart had been flipping through one of their many, many map books,  
trying to decide which was the best route to Vancouver.

It had been a close call. Stuart had been telling the truth about the Jehovah's  
Witnesses, and once Vince had learned this for himself, he'd been desperate  
to get Stuart into the Jeep and out of town before they arrived, not because  
he harbored a grudge against Jehovah's Witnesses, especially, but because  
he knew Stuart was mad for men in lovely suits.

Stuart might cop off with some other bloke-- sod _might_; he _would_, sooner or later-- but Vince didn't have to make it easy for him.

He glanced at Stuart again. It was quite remarkable, actually; he hadn't  
known anyone could bend like that in a car, let alone sleep. But there he  
was, in an abandoned sprawl that suggested either absolute faith in Vince's  
driving or absolute disinterest in his own well-being. His left side was  
braced against the door, his arm bent to hold his head in place, and his  
leg bent so completely that his foot was propped up against the seat.

Vince supposed he was meant to think that Stuart's only thought had been  
for his own comfort, but there was no denying that this posture displayed  
him to his best advantage, at least while he was clothed. And if ever there  
was a soul who was absolutely aware of just how to display himself to his  
best advantage, it was Stuart, who didn't seem to _have_ a bad side.

Still, he _must_ do, mustn't he? If the gods had seen fit to bestow  
upon Stuart Jones a body that was perfect in every possible way, to every  
eye, from every angle, that could only mean that the gods were either very  
cruel or completely daft. Neither option appealed to Vince in the slightest.

Stuart had given fire to the fantasies of scores of men, yeah, but he'd also  
left scores of men weeping on the sidewalk in the pouring rain. How in god's  
name could such a man be a gift to mankind?

If he remembered his shags at all after, he remembered their faces, their  
arses, their cocks, their quirks. Vince was his chronicler, painstakingly  
recording the bloody illuminated verses of Stuart's sex life so that Stuart  
himself was left free to shag his way across the earth, never looking back.

You'd think between the two of them it'd be _Stuart_ who was the most interested in interdimensional space travel, _Stuart_, who'd had everyone.

He'd be the last and best Dr. Who, the slinky, sexy one, straight out of  
the most ridiculous of all fan fiction-- Vince's favorite kind, if for the  
wrong reasons-- the one who had some fantastic alien bloke waiting for him  
on every planet in the galaxy, and who wanted nothing more out of life than  
to discover the perfect fuck, no matter how far he had to go to find it.

The pub tales alone would be worth the aggravation.

Vince shook his head. He was going mad. He was going mad, and finally, finally,  
he was lucid enough to recognize it. He'd heard of road rage and highway  
hypnosis, but there was a third, lesser-known, deadlier driving-related mental  
illness, a sick and twisted cousin to cabin fever:

Cooped up in a car for too long with nobody to keep them company, people went dodgy on you.

It was the only logical explanation for songs like "99 Bottles of Beer on  
the Wall". If you weren't mad enough to write it and you weren't mad enough  
to sing it, then someone else surely would be, and by the time they got to  
Bottle #57, _you'd_ be mad enough to slaughter everyone in the car and  
still have enough homicidal mania left over for the hapless sods at the next  
truck stop.

Mind you, whoever'd written the bloody song ought to've been slaughtered  
on general principles. Crimes against humanity, something like that.

"Stuart," Vince murmured, nudging him with his elbow.

Stuart smiled faintly. "Mm, yeah..." he sighed, squirming a little in his seat, just enough to make Vince squirm as well.

He knew he was safe with Vince, that was the problem. He knew Vince wouldn't  
wake him even if he went mad for real, started clawing at the bugs under  
his skin or shouting at the flaming rhinos that had materialized in the back  
seat and hadn't spared him so much as a terse greeting before they'd started  
criticizing his driving.

If he woke Stuart from a sound sleep simply because he was lonely, he'd be  
wallowing in the same sewer of moral turpitude that had led Stuart to sweet-talk  
him into driving in the first place. Vince wasn't above wallowing in sewers  
of moral turpitude himself, but in times of uncertainty it helped him to  
have a clearer definition of who was who and what was what. Stuart had already  
accepted the Complete Bastard role, and that left Vince taking the high road.  
Again.

He'd scarcely begun griping to himself about it when he spotted a young woman  
at the side of the road, hitchhiking. She was plain, and pregnant, and obviously  
desperate-- millions of miles away from anything, in the waning daylight,  
with nothing but a flimsy plastic shopping bag full of clothes to her name,  
how could she be anything else?

Probably all she'd want to talk about was the boyfriend-- of _course_  
there was a boyfriend-- and Stuart would beat Vince half to death if she  
was still in the car when he woke, but anything had to be better than sullying  
the good name of Dr. Who and all he stood for with the likes of Stuart Jones.

Vince pulled over.

"Thank you," the girl said, climbing into the back seat. "Thank you _so_ much."

"Yeah," said Vince. "Just, would you mind keeping it down a bit? I don't want to wake him."

She peered at Stuart curiously over the headrest. "Jeez," she said, taking in Stuart's pose, "what's _his_ deal?"

"He's a bit daft," Vince said sadly. "Came off his motorbike when he was  
fourteen. Pulling stunts for his girlfriend." Vince shook his head. "Brain  
damage, poor sod. Can't even feed himself now."

He hadn't meant to say anything so preposterous, and he certainly hadn't expected her to _believe_ it; to him, even setting aside his considerable bias, Stuart was plainly sleeping, if in a shameless, sociopathic sort of way.

But the woman said, "Looks like," and sat back in her seat. "What are you, his caregiver or something?"

Because Vince was lonely, and because he felt suddenly that whatever tragedy  
had befallen this woman, she could use a little excitement, a little distraction,  
he said, "Yeah." Then he reached back to shake her hand. "Vince."

"Judy."

"He's Stuart."

She wrinkled her nose delicately. "Does he talk?"

"_Oh_ yeah." Vince pulled back out onto the highway, relaxing into his  
story now that he was more certain that the next phrase out of her mouth  
wasn't going to have anything to do with the particular circle of hell reserved  
for filthy liars who delighted in taking advantage of gullible pregnant hitchhikers.  
"He has these phases-- fugues, his mum called them-- rest her soul. Sounds  
normal, but he's, like, psychic. Starts saying all-sorts."

Her eyes widened. "_No_."

"Yeah," he said, affecting a sort of rueful bemusement. "This one time, we  
must've been fifteen, or sixteen. We were watching some film on telly, I  
forget which-- I think it was _The Eyes of Laura Mars_, actually. Awful film. Just bloody _awful_." Vince caught her expression in the rearview mirror; she wasn't as charmed by his asides as some. "Any road, he just starts _talking_, right, rabbiting on about the blue man, I must mind the blue man. I dunno what in hell he's talking about."

It was a sort of alchemy, lying. One part truth and eight or nine parts fabrication  
made for a believable story-- and a memorable one, more often than not--  
with scarcely any effort at all. Vince wasn't above playing on his looks  
when the occasion called for it, as it clearly did now. He looked like he  
wouldn't lie to a man with a gun who wanted him to say that evolution was  
a lie and that man had actually been created by intelligent ferrets from  
the future, using nothing more than plasticine, steel wool, and common household  
cleanser.

Judy might've been unimpressed by his story to begin with, but she was riveted now.

"I forgot about it," he went on. "You would, wouldn't you? Days passed. Weeks.  
Then I'm in this club, Madness, and this bloke starts chatting me up. _Fantastic_, except for this bloody suit he's got on, this _terrifying_

double-breasted suit, all in royal blue. And it's fuzzy, right, and he hasn't  
even got a shirt on underneath. It's the worst thing in the world."

"Wait--" she frowned at him. "You're _gay_?"

Vince glanced at her again, startled. He couldn't remember the last time  
he'd just come out with it like that. He wasn't sure he _ever_ had-- not to a stranger, any road.

"Yeah," he said eventually.

He watched her reassess him, changing her perceptions, her demeanor. He supposed  
it made a difference to her; taking a lift from a strange anyone was scary  
enough without taking it from someone who might turn out to be a refugee  
from _I Spit On Your Grave_. Taking one from a gay man probably implied a certain amount of security, to her, however tenuous.

Vince always hoped people would take it in stride, treat it the same way  
they'd treat any other difference between them-- eye color, favorite brand  
of crisps, that sort of thing-- but he didn't have to switch on the news  
to know how naïve that was. Any road, it was _his_ car, for all  
intents and purposes. He wasn't likely to boot her out if she got twitchy  
with him, but neither did he have to just _take_ it.

"My sister's called Judy," he offered. "Judith, actually. My half-sister. She's lovely, she's--"

She flicked a hand at him dismissively. "So then what happened?"

He glanced at her again, trying to decide how far to go. Chances were she  
didn't believe a word of it anyway-- being pregnant and stranded somewhere  
between The Middle of Nowhere and New Middle of Nowhere didn't necessarily  
mean she'd fallen off the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down--  
but it would be so much nicer if she had done, if there were some way he  
could just go on and have her eat it up like cake.

He'd have a pub tale about a pub tale, in the end. Sadly, he sensed this was not to be.

"Uh, right," he said eventually, clearing his throat. "Yeah. He, uh, gets  
me home, right, and his whole flat's done up like the bloody Pearly Gates  
Gift Shop and Newsagents. Oil paintings of Jesus on every wall. Jesus performing  
heart surgery. Jesus driving an ice cream truck. Jesus playing poker with  
the Apostles after the Last Supper.

"Jesus had the worst hand in the lot," he said with a soft laugh, "imagine  
that. He's got neon crucifixes, glow-in-the-dark figurines of the Blessed  
Virgin, he's even got a bloody hook rug depicting Jesus standing barefoot  
in the snow outside Santa Claus's house, looking like the end of the world  
is nigh.

"'Course, Jesus _always_ looks like that, doesn't he? You never see  
him just having a laugh, or doing the crossword in The People's Friend, something  
like that. Even when he's poncing about in a meadow with lions and unicorns  
and the entire bloody cast of a United Nations holiday pageant, he always  
looks like he knows he's in for it later on."

In spite of everything, Vince was embarrassed once he realized that he'd  
been poncing about a bit himself. Now it wasn't a question of whether she'd  
believe his story so much as whether it mattered either way. It was quite  
possible that the only reason she hadn't flung herself out of the car was  
that it was still slightly more hazardous to her health than was sticking  
with him and enduring whatever he might come up with next. But only slightly.

Still, she hadn't said anything. Either she'd been bored into catatonia or  
she was patiently waiting him out, hoping there was a point to all this.

"You all right?" Vince asked her.

"Yeah. Go on."

"Okay," he said happily. "So I'm thrown a bit off-balance, right, I mean,  
sometimes you meet a bloke who's a bit camp, he's got every episode of _The Golden Girls_  
on tape and he watches the lot during Dental Health Month, something like  
that, but this bloke is a fucking disaster. So I lock myself in the toilet,  
thinking I've bought myself some time, I'll jump out the window, fake a heart  
attack, _something_, but then I notice he's got something taped to his medicine chest. It's the Apostle's Creed."

"What _is_ the Apostle's Creed?" Judy asked.

"_I _don't bloody know. I only _say_ it was the Apostle's Creed  
'cause that's what it said at the top of the page. It could've been the lyrics  
to 'Good Morning Starshine' for all I know. The thing is, right, that's when  
it came to me: he wasn't trying to be funny."

"Oh no," she said.

"Oh yes," said Vince. "And then I couldn't do _anything_, 'cause I was completely terrified, I just _knew_ this bloke was going to cry after we shagged--"

"You were going to have sex with him anyway?"

"Oh, if you'd only seen him," said Vince, smiling reminiscently. "Any road,  
I come out of the toilet, right, I'm thinking he'll be kneeling by the bed,  
begging forgiveness for the heinous and unholy act he's about to commit,  
but instead he's at the kitchen table. He's got thousands of felt pens and  
'The Holy Bible Coloring Book'. Turns out he isn't gay at all, he just goes  
out clubbing, trying to tell us the Good News." He smiled faintly. "Half  
the time, we thought he was selling E. Poor sod."

She cocked her head at him. "What did you do?"

"I colored the Holy Bible," he confessed. "Even did this dot-to-dot page,  
it just had a great big cross on it, with a caption, said ONE DAY SOME BAD  
MEN KILLED JESUS." He sighed. "I've still got that somewhere."

Judy said nothing, just watched him in the rearview.

"Sorry," said Vince. "I'm a twat, aren't I, going on like that? I haven't even asked you where you're going."

She cast a moody glance out her window. "I'll let you know when we get there," she said eventually.

He'd been hoping for something a bit more specific-- a country, at least--  
but he didn't want to press her. If she started crying, he'd do anything  
to stop her, even if it meant Stuart pitching him out of the car, even if  
he had to carry her on his back to whatever destination she had in mind.

Vince had lost count of the things he wanted to do and see while he was out  
adventuring with Stuart; weird or wonderful, strange or stupid, mad or dull  
or completely lovely, if it crossed his mind, it went on the list. Stuart  
hadn't turned him down yet, but Vince wasn't daft enough to think that he'd  
even once agreed to something he honestly didn't want any part of. He was  
sure to balk at driving Judy god-knew-where to do god-knew-what.

(Vince wasn't keen on that himself. Every minute she was in the car, she was a minute closer to giving _birth_ in the car.)

It had taken some doing to persuade Stuart to take _Vince_ along on this trip-- not a _lot_  
of doing, mind you, but some. Perhaps he'd only wanted to satisfy himself  
that Vince wasn't just tagging along again as he always had.

It was the first truly optimistic thought Vince had had since he'd fallen asleep the night before.

"We might have to part ways a bit before that," he said. "Dunno where we're going, exactly, but it's a _hell_ of a long way from here."

  


*** *** ***  


Stuart woke straight away when an unfriendly hand plunged into his hair and yanked him back against the headrest. "What the _fuck_?" he snarled.

In the next instant, he felt a knife at his throat. _Fucking hell_.  
He tried to relax while he unfolded himself, tried not to struggle, but it  
wasn't easy. With his head pulled back, his throat was stretched out, exposed,  
vulnerable. Whoever it was who'd attacked him, they could carve the bloody  
Bhagavad-Gita on his neck if they felt like it and they had clever hands.

He was going to get cut, sooner or later, he knew that, and he intended to  
do whatever he could to make it later, but god only knew what his attacker  
had in mind, and he still had Vince to contend with.

He hadn't reacted at all like Stuart would've thought he would. He'd turned  
instantly when Stuart shouted, jerking the car wildly, but he'd righted it  
immediately, devoting his attention to his driving. He was white-knuckling  
it now, yeah, and eerily silent, but apart from that, you'd have thought  
all he'd heard was a pebble striking the windscreen: something to be acknowledged  
and disregarded.

Stuart wanted to thump him one; he almost wanted it more than he wanted the  
knife away from his throat. Any sudden move he made was likely to be misinterpreted,  
though, and if he absolutely had to die that day, he wanted to put it off  
till he'd had a chance to tell Vince that it was all his fault, one more  
time. Stuart owed him that much.

"You picked up a fucking _hitchhiker_?" he snarled.

"She looked all right," Vince said apologetically. "She's pregnant."

He wouldn't throw his fag ends out the window because there were signs posted,  
he slowed down for the threat of wildlife because there were signs posted,  
but he saw three hundred million signs about hitchhikers and he said _Bugger that all to hell, she's pregnant._

"Can you kill him instead?" Stuart asked the carjacker. "I'll restrain him for you."

"Shut up," she said, nudging him with the knife. "Stop the car."

It was maddening. The best they could hope for was that they'd be stranded  
in the arctic wilderness without so much between them as a packet of chewing  
gum that was meant to fight cavities and whiten the teeth at the same time  
that it protected one against the heartbreak of gingivitis.

Next best: only one of them would die, and the other could take his clothes,  
cut him up for road snacks, and hope he came across another Good Samaritan.

Third best didn't bear thinking about.

He might've fought the carjacker for the knife if it'd just been him in the  
car, but he wasn't about to take that kind of chance with Vince sitting less  
than three feet away. Vince hadn't even removed his seatbelt yet, the twat,  
and why? Because there were signs posted.

No matter what happened now, they were _fucked_, at least for a bit, and Stuart had to just sit back and _leave it_?

"Vince," he said. Vince shot him a hopeful look, obviously expecting some  
sort of guidance, but Stuart only grinned at him, a mad and evil grin summoned  
up from the depths of his mad and evil heart, and said, "_Punch_ it."

"Right, yeah, okay," said Vince, rolling his eyes. "We're in _Canada_, Stuart. If we didn't die in a car crash, _you'd_ get your throat cut, _I'd_  
be in prison for reckless endangerment and assorted traffic violations,  
and she'd get whiplash, file a civic suit against me, take my life savings  
and move to-- where would you go, Judy?" he asked her.

"Barcelona," she replied, without hesitation.

"There you have it," said Vince. "You're dead, I'm writing the unauthorized sequel to bloody _De Profundis_, and our assailant's living the high life in Barcelona."

"She'll never get that far on twenty quid."

"Oh, fuck _off_."

Vince pulled over slowly, taking care not to jar the Jeep again now that  
it was obvious to one and all that doing so could cut Stuart's throat for  
him. Then he shut off the engine, unfastened his seatbelt, and turned to  
glare at the woman in the back seat-- Judy, apparently, and this brightened  
Stuart's outlook somewhat; surely even Vince couldn't have gotten himself  
on a first-name basis with a cold-blooded killer mid-felony-- all in a tremendously  
deliberate fashion that advertised his state of mind more clearly than anything  
else ever could've done: he was furious.

Anger refined Stuart, it lent clarity to his thoughts, gave him a sense of  
purpose that was often otherwise lacking in his life, but Vince allowed himself  
to become truly furious so seldom that he tended to make a hash of it, striking  
out at everyone and acting so irrationally that nobody could take him seriously  
even when they knew he'd make them pay for that, one way or another.

"Right," Vince said to Judy, "what's next?"

"Get out."

Some things never changed. Stuart didn't doubt that there would never come  
a time in Vince's life when he wouldn't fall for a half-decent sob story.  
That was Vince, he'd let himself believe anything if you dressed it up enough.  
Sometimes now he surprised Stuart, though. Sometimes the line between them  
blurred, sometimes they met each other halfway, Vince a bit harder, Stuart  
a bit softer.

  
_Press the button, dematerialize, step out, new planet._

  
For example, where once in such a situation Vince would've leapt out of the  
car without giving it another thought-- a perfectly sensible reaction that  
Stuart himself might've had if Judy had attacked Vince instead-- now he stayed  
where he was, his jaw set in a stubborn line.

"Vince," Stuart said. "What are you doing?"

He wouldn't look Stuart in the eye-- a serious handicap for Stuart, who couldn't  
even turn his head without killing himself-- but he looked everywhere else:  
the blade of the knife, Judy's hand, still clenched in Stuart's hair, Judy  
herself, the stretch of road they were on. He never made an important decision  
without talking to Stuart first, he thought he was rubbish at it, but now,  
of all times, he was giving it a go.

"I'm staying."

The pair of them were straight out of the sort of soppy melodramas Vince  
had made him sit through on Sunday afternoons when they'd nothing better  
to do: Vince wanted to stay with him so he wouldn't have to face his undoubtedly  
unspeakable fate alone, and Stuart wanted to get him out of the car so that  
at least one of them would have some slim chance for survival.

It was the most humiliating experience of Stuart's life.

"For fuck's _sake_\--"

"Shut up," said Judy. She leaned forward in her seat and rubbed her cheek  
against his, lightly tracing his throat with the tip of the knife. She smelled  
of the sort of cheap, spicy perfume they kept out in the open at the chemists'  
because they didn't care especially if anybody robbed it. Her grip never  
faltered at all. "I don't want to kill him," she told Vince, "but I will  
if I have to."

"Oh my _god_," said Vince, with genuine horror. "I didn't think anyone _said_ that in real life."

It struck Stuart then that everything Judy was doing, she was doing for Vince's  
benefit. He still wouldn't look at Stuart, and it wasn't because he didn't  
want to risk finding out firsthand whether or not looks could kill.

It was because Stuart winced whenever Judy gave his hair a good yank-- he couldn't help it, it bloody _hurt_  
\-- because she hadn't cut Stuart yet, but the way she toyed with the knife  
suggested that she was the type to make a day of it, because he was helpless,  
and although he was making a sincere effort to keep his mouth shut, as bidden,  
his rage was building by the second, and that had to show in his expression  
as well.

Judy didn't give a toss about Stuart, but she had a _hell_ of a problem with Vince.

When the cut finally came, he didn't notice it straight away; it was shallow,  
not too long; the feel of it was nearly indistinguishable from the feel of  
the knife just teasing his skin. He mightn't have noticed it at all, too  
much of his focus spent on a variety of related subjects, but even if he  
hadn't felt his blood trickling down the side of his neck, Vince's expression  
would've given it away: he looked shattered.

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" she said, stroking Stuart's throat with the knife. "Still, if I do it often enough..."

In spite of himself, Stuart was fidgeting now, trying to distract himself.  
He honestly didn't think Judy was prepared to kill either of them, but there  
was no mistaking her for one of god's saner people, and anyway, whatever  
humorous aspects the situation had had to begin with, they'd faded considerably  
when the bitch had actually cut him.

It was the knife that made him nervous, he realized, not the woman wielding  
it. Strange, to think she could've threatened him with a gun or a mace, something  
like that, and he mightn't have taken it so badly.

"Fuck off with that, will ya?" he said, batting at her with his hand. "I think he takes your point."

He died a thousand deaths in the next instant while he imagined all the many  
terrible point/knife puns Vince might choose to make, but Vince just watched  
the knife, silently, hardly breathing, while its blade slid almost languidly  
up and down Stuart's throat. Anyone else would've gotten out of the car as  
soon as she'd cut Stuart, but not Vince, he had something else in mind. It  
chilled Stuart to think that he had no idea what that might be.

"Vince," Stuart prompted. Vince didn't blink. "Oi, _Vinc_e."

Judy wrenched Stuart's head back viciously, straining his jaw, and brought  
the knife up hard against his jugular. "Listen, buddy," she said to Vince,  
"think about what you're doing. Do you really think you have a chance, here?  
Do you really think I'm just gonna, what, get out of the car and _walk_?"

"Vince," Stuart bit out, struggling to keep his voice even. "Get out of the fucking car."

"Fuck off, Stuart," he said. "I'm staying."

"Jesus Christ, do you _want_ me dead? _You_ get out, then she chucks _me_ out. That's the way it's meant to go, Vince, it's a fucking _tradition_. All she wants is the car." Vince didn't even blink. "Get out of the car, Vince," Stuart growled. "_Get out of the car._"

Still Vince didn't move.

"Wow," Judy laughed, "it's like a long-distance commercial co-sponsored by Satan and the GLAAD. _Your boyfriend's being held hostage in Canada_," she said smarmily, "_you're working on your tan at Muscle Beach. When you can't be with him at his time of need, dial 10-10-666 and save_."

"He's not my boyfriend," Vince said irritably.

"Oh, that's right, he's a brain-damaged psychic who uses his special gift to warn you against going home with strange men."

Stuart closed his eyes and tried not to imagine the lavish funeral which was certain to come after this.

Vince wasn't going to try to talk their way out of this; Stuart saw that  
now. He wasn't going to fight Judy for the knife, he wasn't even going to  
get out of the fucking car. This wasn't about bloody _devotion_. Now, of all times, he'd decided to live up to his end of the bargain they'd struck that rainy afternoon on Canal Street.

  
_No passengers, Vince. You let me down and I'll kill you._

Not if I kill you first.

  
The trouble was, Vince wasn't quite so experienced as Stuart at mad bastarddom.  
There was a trick to it, you had to make it your own, apply a certain amount  
of subtlety, add the odd personal touch to distinguish yourself from the  
many other lunatics you were sure to encounter, sooner or later.

Practically anyone could become a garden-variety mad bastard if they made  
a little effort, but you really had to give it your all if you wanted people  
to refer to you as "Oh, yeah, _that_ crazy fucker" in an affectionate  
tone. Vince was no more prepared to accept his Mad Bastard mantle than Stuart  
was to join the scrum at the Great Rugby Game of Accomplished Liars.

Stuart lied well and often, but brevity was the heart and soul of his success.  
Vince was more liable to employ a sort of dazzle camouflage, lying so lengthily  
and colorfully that people just bought it, because how in god's name could  
he be making it all up? His wide-eyed innocence-- however much he faked it--  
made his tales all the more plausible.

"Listen," he said now. "Why don't you boot _him_ out? Take me instead. He's a pain in the arse, Stuart, you'd _have_ to kill him sooner or later, and I'm sure you're in loads of trouble as it is."

"Fuck off, Vince," Stuart growled.

"You see that? Maybe he's not as daft as I said, but he's got _something_ wrong with him, hasn't he? Look at him," he said, waving a hand at Stuart. "You've cut his throat and he's _still_ giving me stick."

Judy slid forward in her seat and peered at Stuart with real interest. "You'd leave him?"

"In a heartbeat," Vince answered for him. "He's a complete wanker."

_Right, that tears it._

In the time he'd been traveling with Vince, Stuart had tapped previously  
unsuspected reserves of tolerance. It had never seemed like a particularly  
good idea to let Vince have his way back in Manchester, when such an indulgence  
might've landed Stuart at a science fiction convention, or a potluck supper,  
or a miniature golf course, or his parents' house.

Now, though, Vince's options were both greatly limited and greatly expanded.  
He couldn't drag Stuart to every excruciatingly horrible social occasion  
in England, so he dragged him to scenic points of interest and roadside attractions  
instead. This was no great hardship for Stuart; Vince happy was Vince tractable,  
and as Stuart had said many, many times since they'd left town, they had  
loads of time.

Any road, there was never that element of obligation attached to it, and that appealed to Stuart more than anything.

If Vince wanted to be a hard man, or an adventurer, if he wanted to be camp,  
or a nutter, or a slut, if he wanted to be childish, or silly, or superior,  
or _anything_ other than what he'd always been, he just _was_, because he felt he _could be_, now, he only had Stuart to look after. Stuart didn't give a toss whether Vince looked after him or not, and never had done.

It was nice, yeah, but the sun would continue to rise and set whether or  
not Stuart had someone trailing along behind him making sure he wasn't putting  
anyone in psychotherapy. No storm-chaser ever prevented a tornado.

Now he gave Vince a look he was sure to recognize, his only warning-- too  
little and too late-- that things were about to get ugly, that he was done  
fucking around, that there would be no apologies.

It was surreal, something Stuart knew he'd remember the rest of his life.

Everything seemed unimportant, now: their location, their situation, all  
of it. Something passed between them, something, some understanding, some  
acceptance, the same as it'd always done. They could've been anywhere, doing  
anything, they could've been back home or somewhere else entirely, and it  
would've been just the same.

  
_All those dependents of yours._

They'll survive.

And I won't?

You might not.

  
"This is _bollocks_," Stuart said disgustedly. "And you're a fucking _twat_, Vince. You're a twat for picking up some nutter with a fucking _machete_ in her handbag, you're a twat for not even bloody _spotting_

that she was a nutter till she cut my fucking throat, you're a twat for  
stopping when she said, and you're a twat for arguing with her-- with _both_ of us!-- now. You're a miserable fucking _twat_. You've always _been_ a twat, and you'll always _be_ a twat. You'll be a twat in the fucking _afterlife_."

By the time Stuart was done with him, Vince looked thoroughly demoralized.  
Bit by bit, his bravado had been leeched away, till he looked beaten and  
shamed, and he stared at the blood trickling down Stuart's neck as if he'd  
cut Stuart himself and he intended to beseech the local authorities to give  
him the death penalty before he even placed his one telephone call.

Then he looked Stuart in the eye, gave him a look that could've meant anything:  
he might've thought Stuart was trying to save his own life, might've thought  
he was trying to save Vince's. Might've thought he meant it, that he thought  
Vince was a disaster of a human being and Stuart couldn't have chosen a worse  
traveling companion if he'd invited Sid Vicious along and left him in charge  
of the gun and a sackful of crack.

Might've felt that way about Stuart.

Without another word to anyone, Vince opened his door and climbed out. He  
posted himself at the side of the road, shoulders hunched, head down, eyes  
up, as if he didn't want to look at Stuart, but he didn't dare look away.

"Fucking hell," Stuart muttered.

Now, finally, Judy let go of his hair. It was all he could do not to pull  
away; the knife was still as close as it'd always been, but his neck was  
sore and his scalp throbbed, for some reason.

"I can't believe you even _have_ blood," she said. "You're an _asshole_, man."

"Can I have my bag, at least?" Vince shouted. "It's bloody cold out. _And_ I'm asthmatic, if I don't have my inhaler I could die right here."

She nudged Stuart with the knife. "Is that true?"

He snorted. "Chance'd be a fine thing. He's got more wind in him than the Three Tenors."

"_Come_ on," Vince said when she didn't react straight away, "give me a fighting chance, at least."

"What's in the bag?" she asked Stuart curiously.

They both had luggage in the boot, but they had overnight bags in the back  
seat, as well, keeping the essentials at hand for convenience's sake. He'd  
never given any thought to what Vince might consider essential, but he could  
imagine it easily enough:

Toiletries, certainly, and condoms and lube-- he'd want all that stuff in  
his bag in the event that they should suffer a car fire or some other unlikely  
catastrophe and he met a good-looking fireman who wasn't feeling chatty--  
a packet of hard butterscotch candies, one or two disposable cameras, his  
little photo album, and an assortment of hideous shirts made of the sort  
of man-made fibers that could survive any calamity without suffering a single  
crease.

Vince was a twat, yeah, but he was an exceptionally practical twat.

"Carry-on stuff," Stuart said eventually.

"I can always check," she warned him.

"I know that, don't I?"

With the ease of long experience, she climbed into the driver's seat, never  
taking her eyes off of Stuart, nor moving the knife a fraction of a centimeter  
away from his throat, not even when she yanked a throw pillow out from under  
her blouse and tossed it at his feet.

He didn't want to break eye contact with her, but he couldn't help himself;  
it was the most hideous throw pillow he'd ever seen. It was peach corduroy,  
with a huge patch sewn on the front, a huge, flowery, embroidered patch that  
was bordered by tiny embroidered mutant kittens. It bore the legend CUT THE  
SASS AND PARK YOUR ASS, rendered in jagged pink script.

"All right, swami," she said when she was settled behind the wheel, "your turn."

He could fight her now; he wanted to, oh _Christ_, he wanted to, but  
there was Vince, in plain sight, looking like he was queued up at the gates  
of hell for a quick dip in the lake of fire. Judy wasn't likely to pack it  
in without a fuss, and Stuart wasn't at his best, what with one thing and  
another. He preferred not to even consider failure, but what choice did he  
have?

"I'll run him down," Judy said matter-of-factly. "He could be out here for  
days before anybody finds him, if they find him at all."

If Judy could run him down, leave him broken and bleeding, grieving for his  
friend and awaiting an ugly demise, it'd be a miracle, an actual ring-the-Pope-and-alert-the-press  
miracle.

Vince had a way of transmitting certain of his mental illnesses to everyone:  
friends, lovers, complete strangers. He had a guilty conscience and a martyr  
complex, and they were among the world's more lethal contagions.

Strange and incomprehensible as it might seem to human logic, there _were_  
people who despised him, yet even they weren't immune; it was next to impossible  
to do him any lasting harm. He never meant anyone ill for any reason, and  
it rendered him defenseless, but at the same time, it brought out the protective  
instincts in nearly everyone he met.

Still, Judy'd cut Stuart once, might've done it again if things had dragged  
out much longer. She mightn't run Vince down, but Stuart knew for certain  
that she was capable of giving him a good shove.

"Here," she said. slinging Vince's bag onto Stuart's lap. "Take this with you."

Stuart smirked. "What about _my_ bag?"

"I'm keeping that. I'm betting you're the one with the traveler's checks."  
She glanced at Vince quickly, wrinkling her nose. "And the nice shirts."

The shirt Vince had on was by no means the ugliest in his collection, but  
it certainly didn't compare to anything Stuart had. Its ugliness was indefinable.  
It wasn't quite the pattern-- a mishmash of diamonds and paisley-- it wasn't  
quite the color-- a menacing and disturbing combination of gray, taupe, and  
olive green-- and it wasn't the fabric-- something flame-retardant and just  
a bit on the shiny side.

All of these elements combined to give it that special something that identified  
it as the sort of shirt Vince would chose when he went out shopping but his  
heart wasn't in it, the sort of shirt that demanded the question: does he  
_like_ it, or is he sending himself up?

"He's _got_ some nice ones," said Stuart.

He did, too. He had a lot of terrifying shirts like this one, yeah, shirts  
that put blokes off completely, shirts that his looks and personality couldn't  
hope to overcome. He bought them deliberately, Stuart was sure, to wear when  
he didn't feel like a shag, didn't feel like making nice with some bloke  
for even as long as it'd take to wank him off in the toilets and send him  
on his way.

But he had nice shirts as well, shirts that emphasized his coloring, flattered  
his frame, transformed him from Good Old Vince into the bloke he idolized,  
the man you remembered for the rest of your life. He knew he looked fantastic  
in them, too. He blushed beautifully when someone mentioned it to him, but  
he knew it, he carried himself differently, _expectantly_.

"I don't give a rat's ass," Judy said. "Just get out of the car."

He looked at Vince again.

He was in agony, anyone could see that. He had to know that Stuart was thinking  
things over, had to be thinking that Stuart might cock things up even worse  
than he himself had, that their last conversation might've already come and  
gone, a terrible conversation, at that, and that if that were the case, it'd  
haunt him for the rest of his life.

Stuart had never expected for his decisions to be informed by his feelings  
for another person; he'd long since adopted a cavalier sort of attitude,  
every man for himself and bugger the lot if they didn't care for the outcome.  
Any other approach was unthinkable, but it'd happened anyway, and now that  
it had, he found that he didn't care for it any more than he'd have cared  
for any other embarrassing ailment: erectile difficulty, inflamed hemorrhoids,  
genital warts…

Still, he got out of the car.

Judy sped off as soon as he cleared the door. When she was a reasonable distance  
away, Vince snatched the bag out of Stuart's hands, fell to his knees and  
tore open the bag's zipper.

"Vince," Stuart growled, dividing his attention between the rapidly departing  
Jeep and Vince's frantic search through the bag. "What the _fuck_ are you doing now?"

Vince gave him a nasty look and yanked out the gun.

Smirking, Stuart held up his hands. "This is fucking brilliant. I've been  
robbed twice before lunch. This isn't even a nice place to _visit_."

"Shut your face," said Vince. He leapt to his feet and took an aggressive  
stance in the middle of the road. Then he squinted into the distance, his  
expression grim and intent as he took the gun in both hands and aimed it  
squarely at the Jeep.

How the gun had made its way into Vince's bag, Stuart couldn't begin to imagine. Vince had taken a _crazy_  
risk for it; he must've known full well that Judy might want to take a look  
inside the bag, his pathetic asthma story being, well, pathetic. He'd most  
likely known that Judy would ask Stuart what was inside it, had certainly  
known that Stuart had had no clue about the gun.

He'd worked it out, weighed his options, and taken the chance to end all chances. It was astounding.

"Jesus _Christ_," Stuart breathed, "I think I'm in love."

Vince ignored him.

He squeezed off three shots in total; two went wild, but one punctured a  
back tire. He cast Stuart a smug, triumphant sort of grin, but it faded quickly  
when the Jeep entered into a spectacular tailspin that only ended when the  
car collided with a telephone pole.

The ensuing silence was by no means absolute; it was broken every so often,  
now by distant birdcall, now by the gentle breeze that disturbed the long  
grass at the road's shoulder, now by Vince, breathing "Oh my god, oh my _god_…"

For what seemed like an age, they just stared at the wreck, not moving, not  
even thinking, really. Stuart had guessed this might happen, but he was an  
optimist at heart, however cynical he was at precisely the same time.

He'd thought Judy might pull over and make a break for it on foot after Vince  
had fired the first shot. It would've been the clever thing to do, and besides  
that, it had a symmetry to it that appealed to him: Vince does something  
mad and it works out well.

Vince doing something mad and killing three people instead of one as a result  
would've been negative reinforcement at its worst, even if one of the fatalities  
had been a deranged, knife-wielding bitch with appalling taste in parlor  
accents.

As it was, Vince had done something mad and landed them somewhere in between  
the best and the worst: Limbo, by way of an actual town called One-Horse.

A thin plume of smoke spiraled up from the general direction of the Jeep's  
engine, and Stuart was prepared to label the situation a grave misfortune,  
but he upgraded it to a tragedy when Judy climbed out of the car, apparently  
unharmed, and pelted off into the woods, empty-handed.

"Bloody hell," Vince said in hushed tones. "She's got a baby."

"She hasn't," said Stuart.

"What if she gives _birth_ out here," said Vince, wide-eyed. "You know, like, _whelp_s it in the forest?"

"She'll leave him out there," Stuart said. "And he'll be raised by wild dogs,  
nurse off a bitch and everything, yeah? They'll find him in ten years' time,  
dressed all in bark and tearing rabbit meat straight off the carcass with  
his teeth. When they capture him, he won't speak a word of English, except  
for the phrase _Get out of the fucking car, Vince_. A complete mystery to one and all. It'll be printed up in psychiatric journals."

Vince elbowed him in the side. "I'm _serious_, Stuart, she's just tiny, who knows how close she is? Women used to _die _in childbirth, all the time, and why? 'Cause of situations like this." He blinked. "Well, not _exactly _like this…"

He might've argued with Vince all afternoon-- now that the balance of his  
life had been returned to him, he was prepared to be magnanimous with everyone  
for a few hours, at least-- but the sight of the wrecked Jeep raised the  
specter of Mrs. Perry's Jaguar, erupting in flames.

It was all very well and good to blow up somebody else's car-- apart from  
the car itself, the only thing Stuart had seen in it that might've had some  
value to Alex's mum was the crocheted tissue-box cover in the back window--  
but Stuart had his _own _possessions to think about.

"She's not gonna give birth _anywhere," _he said impatiently. "She had  
a pillow stuffed up her blouse. Yanked it out as soon as you left." Vince  
still looked skeptical. "For fuck's sake, Vince, go and see for yourself,  
I'm sure she's left it behind. It's the ugliest fucking thing I've ever seen  
in my life. If I hadn't watched her pull it out, I'd have thought it was  
yours."

"Shit." Vince rubbed the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. "Sorry."

Stuart grinned and shook his head, spreading his arms wide to encompass the devastation Vince had wrought. "_Sorry_?"

"What else _should_ I say?" Vince demanded. "You've said it all, haven't  
you, you bastard? You've got yourself another pub tale, We Were Carjacked  
by a Backwoods Psychotic Who Wanted to Try Whittling on Human Flesh, but  
what's _she _got? Have you thought of that? I Carjacked Two Gay Men  
from the British Isles. One was Mad, the Other was Daft, and the Pair of  
Them Couldn't be Arsed to Pay the Slightest Attention to the Matter at Hand,  
Because They Were Too Busy Bitching at Each Other About Absolutely Nothing.  
We've set the gay rights movement back thousands of years."

"I'm just sick about it," said Stuart. "Come on, we'd better collect our  
gear before the bloody car blows up. It's bound to, isn't it?"

"You're the expert," Vince said absently. Suddenly he glanced down at the  
gun, still in his hand, and forgotten till now. "What am I meant to do with  
this? I can't put it back in the bag, it's useless if it's tucked away…"

"Stick it down your trousers," Stuart advised him. "Nobody'll ever look there."

"Watch it." Vince reached around behind him and slid the gun down the back  
of his trousers. "Less temptation this way," he explained, smiling faintly.

"How the hell did it turn up in your bag in the first place? That's what  
I want to know." Vince said nothing. "Come on," he prompted, poking Vince  
in the belly. "Let's have it."

"I took it with me into the filling station shop," Vince said heavily. "The  
car was cold when I woke up, and it didn't occur to me straight away that  
you might've left me out there to die while you shagged the attendant. I  
thought you'd got yourself in a jam. You _do_ that."

"Oh, _I_ do that, do I?" he teased.

"Look, just leave it, all right?" Vince tried to head for the car, but Stuart wasn't having it.

"Hang about," he said, grabbing Vince's wrist. "Why'd you keep it, then?"

"I didn't _keep_ it, Stuart," he said. "I just haven't had a chance  
to put it back. You've been on me every minute, I knew you'd take the piss  
if you saw me--"

Stuart frowned. "So?"

"All right, Stuart, fine, I confess: I wanted it with me in the event that  
you should force me to shoot you, 'cause by last night, it was starting to  
look like you would do, eventually, I'd have to put you down like a rabid  
dog. Can't say why I haven't done it yet, I haven't had the bloody thing  
for twelve hours and already you've given me ample justification…"  
He trailed off slowly, his expression all surprise and dismay.

"Oh, Christ, what is it now?"

"I'm a bit useless, that's all. Here." His hand shot out to cup Stuart's  
jaw, and the touch couldn't have been kinder, but Stuart jerked back a bit  
all the same; an involuntary act, his ordeal with Judy still fresh in his  
mind. "Easy," Vince murmured, coaxing Stuart's chin up.

He had to've been able to see more than enough as he was, but still he crouched  
down to take a closer look, treating Stuart to the picture-postcard view  
of the back of his head. He smelled like apples and tobacco, not an unpleasant  
combination at all, sharp and sweet, and he chuffed a breath down Stuart's  
shirt every now and again while he fussed over him, poking and stroking and  
muttering to himself.

Stuart laughed softly. He was half-hard already; by the time Vince was done with him, it'd be fuck or die.

It was like Vince had never touched him before and he'd always been dying  
for it. It wasn't sexy, especially, but it had an electric quality to it,  
the sort of innocent touch that fired the imagination nevertheless, that  
led one down a dark and marvelous path to a place where that touch might  
not be so innocent, so careful.

It was an aspect of Vince's obsessive nature that he'd never even considered  
till the night before, but since then, carjacking not withstanding, he'd  
thought of nothing else. Vince lost in a fine sexual haze, in a _fuck_, all his many quirks and idiosyncrasies stripped away, leaving nothing behind but a crabby, selfish heap of _want_.

He liked Vince's quirks, and more than that, he depended on them-- from time  
to time-- to keep him grounded, to keep him sane. It was just that when it  
came to a shag, good-natured bitching wasn't the kind of talk he liked to  
hear.

"Have to get this clean," Vince said. "Don't want infection to set in. Mind you, gangrene's no threat to _your_ brain. We should have a first aid kit, though, you never know what could happen--"

"Vince," he said, sliding a hand up and down Vince's arm.

"Mm..?"

"You fancy a shag?"

Vince leapt back, staring at Stuart incredulously, as if he'd been asked  
whether he fancied being tortured to death on his birthday. "_No_."

"Bollocks," said Stuart, closing the distance between them. "If you could see yourself right now..."

The thing was, he hadn't looked like he fancied a shag especially until Stuart  
had said so. Now he had that look again, just as he'd had in the bathroom  
the night before, that hungry, resentful look, as though Stuart alone was  
responsible for his happiness, and he trampled on it for kicks.

"You never even touched me," Stuart reminded him.

"And I'm not going to, you bastard," Vince said.

He sounded like he'd never been more insulted in his life, but his gaze swallowed  
Stuart whole, starting with his hair and lingering only slightly longer at  
his throat than at his face before it slid down, slowly, taking in chest  
and arms and narrow hips before it stopped where his cock filled out his  
jeans.

After sixteen years' acquaintance, nothing Stuart said or did should've shocked  
him anymore; nevertheless, he looked scandalized. "For Christ's sake, Stuart,  
we're stranded in the middle of bloody _nowhere_, we don't even know what if anything that woman's left behind, and then we've got a bloody _marathon_ ahead of us--"

Stuart took his head in both hands and yanked him in for a kiss. Vince moaned  
into his mouth, gave himself up instantly, sucking on Stuart's tongue, plunging  
his hands into Stuart's hair and grabbing on tight, unmindful of the cruel  
injustice it had already suffered that day.

Growling low in his throat, Stuart grabbed Vince's hips and ground against him, ground _hard_

. He'd come in seconds if they kept this up, and so would Vince, by the feel,  
but Vince seemed no more bothered about this than Stuart himself was.

Arousal always thrummed just beneath the surface, for him, as constant and  
natural as any other involuntary bodily function. It'd been easy enough to  
maintain in the past; he might have a shag, or a wank, might even forget  
about it, come to that.

Having one particular shag in mind had been a novel experience to begin with,  
but as Vince had turned him down, time and again, Stuart had formed a whole  
new outlook on his past refusal to allow himself to be drawn into such entanglements:

He'd been the smartest man on earth.

Since then he'd become the _saddest_ man on earth, chasing after Vince  
as he was, all but begging him for a shag. Should've told him to sod off  
after the first time he'd said no; instead he'd shrugged, fucked off to another  
club, and found himself a bloke who hadn't even _thought_ of saying no, because he hadn't had a reason.

Stuart tried not to examine his behavior too closely, but he found himself  
at loose ends from time to time, waiting for Vince to come out of the shower,  
waiting for Vince to finish his tour of the Spam Museum, waiting for Vince  
to _what fucking ever_. Times like those, he sometimes asked himself  
whether his newfound passion for Vince had anything at all to do with the  
fact that Vince alone of all men had ever rejected him. Repeatedly.

Now, though, with Vince clinging to him, grinding on him, moaning helplessly  
whenever Stuart touched him just so, he didn't give a toss about how it'd  
happened, or why. He'd gotten what he wanted, and that was everything.

"It's adrenaline, this," Vince gasped when Stuart broke away to lick his  
jaw. "Snatched back from the gaping maw of death and all that."

Stuart grinned and wiggled his hips. "So?"

"So we can't just shag at the side of the road while our lives are in jeopardy.  
If we die out here, we'll haunt this place till the end of time. I don't  
care how long that is, Stuart, this place is never going to be nice."

"That's not it," he said roughly, tracing Vince's mouth with his tongue before  
stealing another kiss. "You want a big do. Great big bed strewn with rose  
petals, candlelight, string quartet off in the corner playing bloody 'Moonglow'--"

Vince pushed him away, grumbling, "Fuck off."

"Fuck _me_," he giggled, "You _do_." Vince started stalking off  
toward the Jeep. "Vince, be reasonable, where the fuck are we going to find  
frankincense to burn in this part of the world?"

"You always have to take the piss, don't you?" Vince said. "You always have to be a cunt about things."

"For fuck's sake, we can't start standing on ceremony now." Vince kept walking.  
"Vince!" Still nothing. "Fuck off, then," he muttered. He tried to rake through  
his hair with his hands, but he hit a snarl almost instantly. "Shit." He  
could just guess what it looked like, now; suddenly Vince's silence on the  
subject seemed ominous.

Cursing darkly, Stuart snatched up Vince's bag and followed him, slowly,  
thinking things through. By the time he made it to the Jeep, Vince had already  
unloaded half their gear: an intimidating, mountainous formation of luggage  
that dwarfed the Jeep and promised an ugly, ugly walk into town.

Stuart strode straight past it and parked himself in front of the driver's  
side mirror, examining the ruin of his hair. "Aw, Christ, will you look at  
that?"

He'd seen it looking worse, of course; after a bad night, a bout with a malicious  
stylist, a fantastic shag, but always before there'd been the immediate promise  
of salvation. He didn't spend half the time on his hair that Vince did on  
his own, but there was a certain amount of preparation involved-- machinery,  
chemicals, and so on. It could be days before he saw any of that stuff again,  
and experience had taught him that time would not be kind.

"Yes, that _is_ the real tragedy of the afternoon, isn't it?" Vince  
growled, slinging another bag out of the boot and onto the pile. "The Jeep's  
buggered, yeah, we'll probably die of exposure, or starvation, or boredom,  
but heaven forfend that anything should disturb the glossy perfection of  
your _hairstyle_."

"Given the choice," Stuart said calmly, flicking a curl back into place,  
"would you rather worry about what grubs taste like and if freezing to death  
is really as peaceful as they say, or whether or not anyone's gonna call  
you Buckwheat in the next twenty-four hours?"

"Someone has to worry about it."

Sighing explosively, Stuart stood up and turned to face him. Vince was humiliated  
and angry, but he was also completely turned on, in spite of everything.  
It wouldn't take more than a word or a touch now for Vince to give himself  
up again. He had that look about him, like he'd let Stuart bend him over  
the hood of the Jeep and shag him senseless in front of god all his creatures,  
making only a token objection if he made any objection at all.

And then he'd dedicate the rest of his life to making Stuart pay for doing it.

"Vince," he said. "Worry about the grubs when you're feeling peckish. Worry  
about freezing to death when the sun goes down. It's two o'clock in the afternoon,  
for fuck's sake, and it's nowhere near as cold out as you said. If you _have to_  
worry about something now, if it's a compulsion, like, worry about whether  
or not the bloke who picks us up is gonna want you to suck him off. Then  
worry about what he looks like."

Vince dropped the bag in his hands and turned to glare at Stuart. His expression  
was an elaborate mishmash of emotions, ranging from passion to anger to frustration  
to resignation. He could've had a go at Stuart over a thousand things-- though  
they had a long day ahead of them and it'd only just gotten started, already  
Stuart had damned his soul afresh at least six times-- but he took a page  
from Stuart's book, tilting his head thoughtfully to consider the matter  
at hand.

"He'd want _you_ to do it, wouldn't he?" he said. "You look like you're up for anything. _'Specially_ now," he added, nodding vaguely at Stuart's sexual disarray. "And you _would_, 'cause you are, and you don't give a toss what they look like."

Stuart grinned at him lazily. "If that were true, I'd have shagged you ages  
ago. It's old age, this. Vision's shot, going senile, getting desperate,  
suddenly even you look like the sum of a thousand dreams."

"I always did," Vince muttered, returning to his labors. "'S not _my_ fault you're so dense."

  


*** *** ***  


"Jesus Christ, is it a fucking _clown_ car? We didn't have this many bags when we left."

Vince patted his shoulder sympathetically and tried not to smile. "We only had _your_ bags when we left," he said. "I've accumulated one or two things since then."

"One or two," Stuart said snidely, booting one of the bags. "You're a junk  
magnet, Vince. One bag of clothing, one bag of toiletries, six bags of souvenir  
thimbles, twelve bags of matchbooks, seventeen bags of travel brochures--"

"These are mine," Vince said, indicating a humble selection of bags that  
he'd left off to the side. They numbered four in total, including the one  
he'd had in the back seat. "Those," he said, pointing at the sky-scraping  
pile next to the Jeep, "are yours."

Stuart's eyes widened. "They're not."

"I'd have said something sooner," Vince said kindly, "only I felt sorry for  
you. The number of things you can't live without is heartbreaking."

"I don't need anything," Stuart declared.

"Just this ashtray," he said. "And this paddle game, the ashtray and the  
paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray,  
the paddle game and the remote control, and that's all I need. And these  
matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle  
ball. And this lamp--"

"Zip it, will ya?"

He started pacing, circling his mound of luggage as if he meant to attack it when the moment was right.

Vince had seen him do it before-- under different circumstances, of course.  
He did all his best thinking when he was mobile, prowling, and woe betide  
the unfortunate soul that should interrupt the process.

Not that Vince ever would; Stuart was lovely like that, eyes flashing, limbs  
swinging in that easy way he had, sharp and fluid at the same time. What  
he came up with all depended on his state of mind, a thousand answers to  
a single question, but Vince never worried much over which it might turn  
out to be. With very rare exceptions, Stuart had a maddening affinity for  
good ideas.

It was Vince-- slow and steady and usually well-intentioned-- who could start  
out giving someone directions to the public library and wind up causing an  
international incident. He had only to glance at the Jeep's crumpled front  
end to be reminded of that.

Still, though.

How was he meant to guess that Judy'd had a pillow stuffed up her blouse?  
It was April, yeah, but spring was obviously an abstract concept in northern  
Canada. With the amount of clothing necessary to survive a walk to the corner  
for a carton of milk, _everyone_ looked pregnant. And what sort of person could've driven past a stranded pregnant woman, anyway?

(Stuart, he supposed. He wouldn't have hesitated, if Vince had been sleeping.  
If Vince had been awake, he'd still have driven past Judy, only then he'd  
have argued with Vince for as long as it took to silence him, long after  
Judy was no more than a hazy memory for the pair of them.)

Maybe Vince wasn't a twat in all the many and varied ways that Stuart had  
said, but there was no denying that the blame for this situation lay squarely  
with him. If he hadn't picked Judy up, if he'd gotten out when she said…

He'd tried to put things right twice, tried to think what Stuart might've  
done, and how had that worked out? Stuart with his throat cut, and the Jeep  
smashed and smoking. Granted, that all might've happened anyway with Stuart  
in charge, if for different reasons, but to Vince, the blame lay entirely  
with himself once again. He could no more have thought like Stuart than Stuart  
could've thought like him. They'd never have gotten on so well otherwise.

Mind you, Stuart hadn't been seriously harmed, and the Jeep was headed for  
the garage rather than the scrap yard, but a little sunshine and a low body  
count didn't change the fact that he wouldn't have had to look on the bright  
side at all if he hadn't stopped the car in the first place.

Stuart didn't seem that bothered about it, any road. He'd flared up a bit  
in the car, yeah, but afterward he'd been positively _cheerful_. Who else could've  
declared his love to a man who was about to shoot out the tire on his car,  
leaving him stranded in a region of the world in which people regularly stepped  
outside to get the morning paper and found the town alcoholic frozen to death  
on their front lawns?

Vince sat down on the long grass at the road's shoulder, then thought better  
of it and sprawled out on his back. _"You fancy a shag?" Do I hell._

It was the altitude, had to be. Like Vince's own, Stuart's brain was getting  
only a fraction of the oxygen it needed to function normally. This was the  
result: he wasn't all that pissed off at Vince, he wasn't worried especially  
about what would become of them. He just wanted to know whether he still  
looked shaggable and how the _fuck_ they were meant to transport all his many  
bags into One-Horse.

_  
One-Horse_, for Christ's sake. They _couldn't _take all his bags with them.  
A place like that, the bags would block out the sun and plunge the town into  
eternal darkness.

"Right," said Stuart, flopping down beside him. "We leave the bags in the  
car and we start walking. Sooner or later somebody'll stop, or we'll make  
it into town. It's not that far, twenty miles at most. They won't have a  
garage, but they'll know where to find one."

"We can't just _leave _it, Stuart. What if she comes back?"

"You really think she's gonna fuck with you after what you've done? She's  
a knife-wielding carjacker, yeah, but you're the gun-toting _psychotic _who  
smashed his own car to stop her taking it."

"You don't have to sound so bloody _chuffed _about it," he said irritably. "We're _stranded _now."

"So's she," he said. "She hasn't even got her scary pillow, has she? We still  
have all our gear, and the car, once it's mended. We'd have had fuck-all  
if you'd let her go. We haven't even got religion."

_"I've _got religion," Vince declared. "I'm a Mixologist. Never go anywhere without my Barman's Bible."

"Mm," Stuart agreed. "And like half the other zealots in the world, you've  
never actually _read _your holy text. Hence your world-famous Dregs of the  
Drinks Cabinet, your world-famous Toilet-Cleanser and Tonic, your world-famous--"

"Fuck off," said Vince. "You always drank them, didn't you?"

"It was either that or your world-famous Terrifying Tap Water. Live baby alligators in every glass."

"You could've fucked off home. Could've brought your _own _liquor if you were that bothered about it."

"I wasn't," he said simply. "Don't you know that?"

Vince turned a bit to look at him. He was smiling faintly, seemingly oblivious  
to anything but the vast expanse of sky that to Vince seemed at once too  
close and far away. He'd quite liked the night sky, all those stars, all  
that _space_, but now that he'd taken a good look at it in the daytime, all  
he saw was thunderbolts and funnel clouds, floods and droughts and a multitude  
of other acts of god that might strike people from a hundred walks of life,  
but change each one of them in exactly the same way.

"It's a bit creepy, isn't it?" Vince said. "All that sky."

Stuart met his eyes, still smiling, and gave him that look again, that weird  
look he'd given Vince in the bathroom the night before, fathomless and inscrutable.  
The sunlight brought out the gray in his eyes, the sheen of his hair, the  
creamy quality of his skin…

Vince never got tired of looking at him. It was sad and shallow, but he was  
willing to stand the cost. He liked the Northern Lights till the cold set  
in, he liked the Great Pyramids till he started to burn, he liked the mountains  
of Tibet except for the climbing, but no matter what happened with Stuart,  
Vince never got tired of looking at him.

Life was filled with moments like this, simple ones, plain ones, moments  
that nevertheless possessed a sort of rough perfection, a _momentousness _that  
burned itself into the memory so that no matter where you went or what you  
did for the rest of your life, a sight or a smell or a sound would take you  
straight back there.

Any time that he ever saw a sky so clear that he could see the corona around  
the sun, any time he ever smelled trees, the smell of a great mass of trees  
all stretched up to the sky in those first weeks of spring, any time he ever  
felt the wind whipping his face, he'd think of this: lying in the grass with  
Stuart, their future uncertain in every sense, neither of them really giving  
a toss.

Still, someone had to break the silence, cut the connection. For once, it was Stuart.

"Look," he said, "the Jeep's not gonna explode, nobody's coming, nobody's  
gonna rob our bags. Why don't we leave them in the car, worry about the lot  
when the truck brings it in?"

Vince glanced at Stuart's mass of bags and sighed. "Dunno why you couldn't have thought of that _before _I unloaded everything."

"I was thinking about something else," he said slyly, slanting Vince a sultry  
look. "And I fancied watching you. Got me going something chronic, all that  
power, all those muscles--"

Vince cuffed him. "Fuck off."

"Raw animal magnetism," he went on. "Watching you move, I saw an echo of  
the past, burly Englishmen slinging luggage back in caveman times--"

"One more word out of you," Vince said menacingly, "just one, mind you, and you can sling your own bloody luggage, you bastard."

"I would've done anyway," said Stuart. "You only started 'cause you were  
hoping I kept my aftershave in with my shirts. Ruin the lot, I come begging,  
next thing, we're one of those scary couples in matching warm-up suits."

"We aren't a couple."

"Oh, sod off, Vince, you know better." Vince looked away. "You and your bloody  
_ceremony_, you think that means anything? People get married every day, it's  
nothing to them half the time, you think _ceremony _is important?"

"I _don't_," he insisted. "I just-- Listen." Vince came to his feet and loomed  
over him, hands on hips. "Let's just leave it for now, yeah? 'Cause you're  
right, we've got more pressing concerns. And we've got loads of time, that's  
what you're always saying, isn't it? We don't have to hash this all out right  
here."

For a second it looked like Stuart was going to pursue it, but it seemed  
he didn't mind leaving it for now, or else he didn't want to know what Vince  
might've said. He just grinned and said, "Hang about, did you just say I'm  
right?"

Vince rolled his eyes. "I've said it before."

"Only when I've said something that would've been obvious to anyone," he  
said, crossing his arms beneath his head. His shirttails came loose from  
his waistband, revealing a tempting patch of smooth white skin. "It's raining  
out, for example. You can't get high from sniffing fabric softener. Cows  
say moo."

"Tell you what," said Vince. "You just stay where you are, and _I'll _start  
walking. When I get to One-Horse, I'll tell them there's a dead man lying  
in the grass on the outskirts of town, and he didn't die in a car crash,  
or freeze to death, no, nothing like that, he bloody asphyxiated from running  
at the mouth."

"Like you'd leave your bags lying on the road like that," said Stuart. "Someone  
might come along, some shiftless marauder with a fondness for hideous shirts  
and aftershave that'd strip the paint off an ocean liner, and then where  
would you be? Naked and afraid."

He tilted his head back to get a better look at Vince. The cut on his throat  
stood out all the more, and Vince's argument was destroyed then and there,  
but Stuart didn't know that, or didn't care.

"Mind you," he said, "naked and afraid is still an improvement over _dressed_  
and afraid. D'you know, you get your shirt off, you look like you've got  
dishonorable intentions."

"That's because I have, Stuart," Vince said wearily.

"Yeah, but you _look _it, then," said Stuart. "I've seen you with some bloke,  
half-shagging him on the dance floor, hands on his arse, tongue down his  
throat, still you look like any second you're gonna stop and ask him if he  
saw that program about life-saving pets on BBC Two."

It didn't bother him that he'd done it, but it _mortified _him to think that  
anybody'd noticed, especially Stuart, who never gave his attention to anything  
anyone did unless he thought it might be worth one or two sarky remarks over  
lunch the next day.

As rarely as people seemed to notice Vince, he'd come to imagine that they  
didn't notice him at all, and that, he knew, was a big mistake. Somebody  
noticed everyone, it was like the food chain. People ignored Vince, yeah,  
but he ignored other people in turn, and they ignored other people…  
Still, it didn't quite fit that Stuart would be one of the people on the  
next rung down.

"When the hell have you ever found the time to watch me snogging some bloke?" Vince demanded.

"Oh, I _made _time," he said silkily. "It's not like it's a regular occurrence,  
is it? It's like a meteor shower, or a lunar eclipse, something like that.  
People all over the planet are tuned in to watch, united in marveling over  
an event that only takes place once every seventy-six years. And you can't  
even see it then unless you're living in Kenya or something."

"Just be thankful that I've already given you the gun."

Stuart rolled to his side, pulled the gun out from his waistband, and offered  
it to Vince, smiling the same smug, arrogant smile he always wore whenever  
he was absolutely sure of an outcome that would've been in doubt for anyone  
else on earth.

It was a smile that had provoked a number of reactions in Vince over the  
years, outright admiration chief among them-- humility had no place in Stuart's  
life; it would've been obscene, almost _insulting_\-- but when Vince took the  
gun from him and saw that smile falter, he was nevertheless filled with pure,  
malicious satisfaction.

"I won't kill you now," Vince said darkly, "But it's on the roster."

Stuart shook his head sadly. "Oh, you spoiled it."

"Too much?" Stuart nodded. "Should've kept my mouth shut, yeah?"

"You take the gun, stick it in your waistband. Don't break eye contact, let  
it stretch out till the other bloke's sweating. And for fuck's sake, don't  
laugh."

"I wouldn't," Vince protested.

"You _would_, you're the saddest man on earth. Right. So, when he's seconds  
away from pissing himself, _then_ you turn and you walk away. Only you don't  
just walk, you sort of _stalk_, like you could turn around and plug him any  
minute."

"Oh, I'd like to see _you_ try to pull that off," Vince snickered. "Stuart  
Jones: High Plains Drifter?" Stuart glared at him. "Stuart, seriously. You've  
a lovely walk, I could watch you all afternoon, but if you want to strike  
fear into the hearts of men, you'll have to stick to the steely glare bit  
and hope the other bloke cracks first and makes a break for it."

  


*** *** ***  


They'd been walking for a bit, perhaps a mile, no more. Almost from the moment  
they'd started out, Stuart had spoken less and less, whether out of irritation  
or distraction, Vince couldn't say.

"Look on the bright side," Vince said after a time. "It's a lovely day."

"You _always_ think it's a lovely day," Stuart said. "Frogs could fall from  
the sky and the ground could burst into flames, and still you'd think it  
was a lovely bloody day."

"Would not," Vince protested. "Bit different, maybe. Besides, I'd feel bad  
about all those frogs. Be bad enough to plummet to your death without catching  
fire on the way down." He turned and grinned at Stuart. "_God_, imagine the  
road report. Traffic's a bit heavy on Route 71, there's ten-foot flames coming  
up from the ground and thousands of frogs exploding like hand grenades for  
a two-mile stretch between Been There and Done That."

"You're such a twat, Vince."

"Oh god, turn the _page_, Stuart. Surely there's at least one more word in  
your vast lexicon of insulting profanity that describes me just as well."

Stuart gave him a considering look, then shook his head.

  


*** *** ***  


"Right, okay," said Vince, "what's your first question?"

Stuart seemed to be thinking this over, but then he said, "What the fuck have I ever done to you?"

"Oh, don't do that, don't," Vince said, bumping hips with him. "I'd die of natural causes before I made it to the Cs."

"Give it a rest, will ya? If you're gonna act like a doormat, you can't start complaining when people put the boots to you."

"What the hell is that?" Vince said indignantly. "_Chicken Soup for the Soul in the Gas Chamber_?"

Stuart rolled his eyes. "I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know."

"Oh, so it's all _my_ fault, is it? It isn't _your_ fault you're a bastard, it's _my_ fault for putting up with it?"

"_Yeah_. What did you think, you're not responsible 'cause we're mates, or  
'cause you wanna fuck me? Crimes of passion, the heart has its reasons, that  
sort of thing, yeah? You think I owe you something 'cause you _love_ me?"

He didn't say it angrily; if anything, he looked terribly amused by the very  
idea. Love came cheaply to Stuart Jones. It mightn't last, it mightn't matter,  
but love it was. Some people might've stayed home, let themselves go. Some  
people might've formed a cult and taken over the world. Stuart did what he  
liked, pleased himself, and left it up to the people who drifted in and out  
of his orbit to do the same.

Sometimes when he was _really_ off his face, he likened himself to a god. Vince  
invariably asked him why he hadn't made himself a bit taller in that case,  
but by the time Stuart laid claim to deity, he was far, far beyond any but  
the rudest understanding of human speech.

"No," Vince said eventually. "Just, like, if I can't complain when people  
treat me like a doormat, you can't complain when people treat you like a  
bastard. Because you are, Stuart, you're a right fucking bastard."

Stuart took it in stride. "Fair enough," he said. "I mistreat you 'cause I'm a bastard, and you let me 'cause you're a doormat."

Vince scowled at him. "'S not that simple."

"It will be by the time it's a two-part miniseries."

"Oh, no, don't sell yourself short, Stuart. I'm sure they'd give you at least six episodes."

"What about you?"

"I didn't want to tell you," he said confidentially. "But it doesn't matter  
how many episodes _I'm_ in. You'd be the dark horse, sexy, mysterious, bit  
of a wild card, but it's always the sweet one has the most fans. Crowd-pleaser,  
yeah?" He grinned. "Mind you, get together all the people _you've_ pleased,  
you've got quite a crowd in your own right."

"I should have a convention," he said. "ShagCon 2000. I'd have to stretch  
it out over three or four days, maybe a week, just so everyone could make  
it and I wouldn't have to turn anyone away. I reckon I could pack the Conference  
Centre."

Vince was so enchanted by the idea that it didn't occur to him to make any  
sort of critical comment. "You'd have the Vinceologists on one side, Stuartarians  
on the other, and in the middle…" He paused for dramatic effect. "The  
_Calvinists_."

"I'm not having bloody Calvinists at my convention."

"You don't understand," Vince said pityingly. "The Calvinists, right, they  
wouldn't be _actual_ Calvinists, irresistible grace and all that. It'd be a  
joke, play on words, actually they'd be obsessed with your boxers. They'd  
have a slogan, something borrowed, something cheesy." His eyebrows shot up.  
"Yeah, like, _Nothing comes between me and his Calvins_."

After some time, Stuart said, "I'm not sure what's scarier: the idea that  
people might do that, or the obvious fact that _you_ know all about it."

"I'm telling you for your own good," said Vince. "You keep making a spectacle  
of yourself like you do, sooner or later you'll be signing t-shirts for the  
Stuart Jones Estrogen Brigade."

Stuart stared at him. "_Estrogen_."

"Don't take it so hard," said Vince. "I'll be signing boxes of tissues."

  


*** *** ***  


"Come on," Vince wheedled. "One question. That's all I'm asking."

"I've got three."

Vince narrowed his eyes. "All right."

"One: who invented Twenty Questions? Two: is he still living? Three: if so, where can I find him? I'd like a word."

"What's your first question relating to what I'm thinking of?" Vince said exasperatedly.

Stuart gave him a nasty smile. "How many times did Hazel drop you on your head when you were growing up?"

"What's your first question relating to what I'm thinking of that might conceivably lead you to _guess_ what I'm thinking of?"

"Would you care to guess what _I'm_ thinking of?" Stuart asked politely. "I'll  
give you a hint, shall I? It's lethal, and it can't be detected in autopsy."

"Have to pass the time somehow," Vince grumbled.

Stuart came to an abrupt halt and rounded on him, saying evenly, "Vince.  
When have we ever had trouble passing the bloody time? We're in the nick,  
drunk and disorderly, yeah? Fifteen years old, parents on the way, god knows  
what'll happen. You can't last another second without debating the merits  
of having Toto compose the score for _Dune_."

"Stuart, it was bloody Toto. D'you even _know_ who would've been worse than that?"

Stuart was silent.

"There you have it," Vince said triumphantly. "_Nobody's_ worse than Toto, they're a fucking abomination."

"I shagged the bass player," he said.

Vince gaped at him. "You never."

"I _did_," he said, laughing. "Least he _said_ he was the bass player. Dunno who'd lie about it, even in the eighties."

"You never said."

"Well, you had the right of it, didn't you? It's one thing to admit you play  
bass in Toto, but it's something else entirely to admit you _shagged_ the bloke."

"Like that's ever stopped you," Vince scoffed. "Oi, Vince," he said, managing  
a passable impression of Stuart's faint Irish accent, "I shagged a mass murderer  
at the Coldplay concert at Slane. I shagged a televangelist at the Summit  
for Spirituality in Munich. I shagged Ricky Martin in the toilets at Flex."

He grinned. "_Everyone's_ shagged Ricky Martin in the toilets at Flex."

"Oh, sod off, he's never even been to Manchester."

Stuart gave him a thoughtful look. "Right, everyone but _you_."

  


*** *** ***  


"What was I supposed to do, Stuart? Get out of the car and leave you with her?"

"Yes! For fuck's sake, Vince, didn't you notice that she had something in  
mind? If she'd wanted to kill me she'd have done it straight away, she wouldn't  
have let you prattle on for god knows how long, she wouldn't have let you  
_befriend_ her."

"Might've done," he offered. "Might've been a sadist, like."

"No self-respecting sadist is gonna sit through your interminable stories  
just for the questionable satisfaction of fucking you over. Even masochists  
don't have that kind of time."

"I don't see you checking your watch."

"I'm a hedonist," he said breezily. "And I like you."

"And Judy didn't," Vince concluded.

"Not at all."

"I told her I'm gay," said Vince. "You think that was it?"

"Vince, you said I have brain damage." He stopped where he was and struck a pose. "Do I look brain-damaged to you?"

Vince rolled his eyes. "It isn't _really_ noticeable till you start talking."

  


*** *** ***  


"Listen, Stuart," said Vince, his patience wearing thin, "the sooner you  
ask your questions, the sooner you'll have it over and done with."

"My turn," Stuart said darkly. "Then I'm meant to think of something you can guess."

"So?"

"So you'd be rubbish at it. You'd try to second-guess me, but then you'd  
think I'd think of that and you'd try to _third-guess_ me. Next thing, you're  
catatonic from the strain. Or else you'd find some way to twist it all around  
so you could have a go at me."

"I would not."

"Yes you would," Stuart insisted. "I've met aged _nuns_ more forgiving than you."

"When have you ever known me to hold a grudge?"

Stuart snorted. "When have I not?"

"_When_?"

"Oh, Christ," Stuart growled, throwing up his hands. "Fine. You're twelve  
years old, you've smashed your ten-quid pedal bike into a brand new Mercedes,  
banged it up all to hell. Its owner finds you lying on the ground, takes  
you inside, patches you up, feeds you lunch, never breathes a word about  
damages. What's her name?"

"I don't remember," Vince mumbled.

"Right. Age fourteen, there's a bloke at the Empire Cinema, sneaks us into  
restricted films just 'cause he likes you. He doesn't want a shag, he just  
_likes_ you. What's his name?"

"I don't remember."

"Right. Year twelve, chemistry, we're lab partners, yeah? Directly in front  
of us sits a bloke who torments you when you're alone, messes you about,  
calls you Mince. What's his name?"

Oliver Gilbert, it'd been, but it wouldn't do to tell Stuart so. "What difference  
does it make?" he said lamely. "That doesn't prove anything, Stuart. It's  
not as if _you_ know their names."

"Of course I bloody don't," said Stuart. "But you're supposed to be Mister  
Personality, aren't you, the fucking master of ceremonies at god's banquet,  
yeah? You love everyone, everyone loves you, but if you don't get enough  
cheese on your pizza, no power on earth can change your mind about the diabolical  
bastard who's responsible."

"That pizza was an affront to pizzas everywhere," Vince defended. "It wasn't  
just the _cheese_, Stuart, it was the death's head mushrooms they used for  
topping, it was the bologna slices they attempted to pass off as pepperoni,  
it was the crust you could've used to saw through a thick length of lead  
pipe-- that was the same pizza they serve to inmates in Turkish prisons,  
Stuart, it was the pizza that says _I hate you and want you to die_." He clocked  
Stuart's expression and sighed. "I'm just making it worse, aren't I?"

  


*** *** ***  


Intellectually, Vince had always known that they'd still be walking when  
the sun went down, that they would, eventually, have to start worrying about  
freezing to death. Neither of them was especially enticed by roomy clothing,  
so it wasn't as if they could double up on trousers.

Just as well; it only would've slowed them down. Stuart had set the pace  
early on, a brisk sort of stroll, neither rushing nor dallying. He'd accepted  
that they'd be walking for quite some time, had adjusted his gait accordingly.  
It was Vince who kept looking for cars.

Miles and miles of all that scenic nothing, and god only knew what questionable  
charms awaited them in One-Horse, a town so small that they wouldn't have  
known it even existed if they hadn't spotted its name on a road sign. For  
all they knew, they'd be spending the night in someone's carpark. _And_ they'd  
have to break in first.

Sooner or later they would run out of things to talk about, sooner or later  
their overnight bags would start to feel like sacks of stones. They'd slow  
down. Four or five hours more of walking ahead of them, but they'd want to  
stop for a bit, ten minutes, no more. Vince would convince Stuart to take  
a short nap-- he still _looked _fantastic, injuries not withstanding, but there  
was a hunch to his shoulders that Vince didn't like at all-- but Vince'd  
be knackered as well, and what else could go wrong, after all they'd been  
through?

Next thing, they'd both be dead of hypothermia, and it'd start snowing.

By the time Vince really did spot a set of headlights in the distance, he  
was so convinced of his and Stuart's awful, icy fate that he thought he was  
hallucinating.

"Stuart," Vince said in hushed tones.

He cast an irritated look over his shoulder. "What?"

"D'you think anybody ever has, like, coldstroke? D'you think if you get cold  
enough, you might get some sort of cold-related brain fever?"

"Sounds like," said Stuart. "I keep telling you to try buying a jumper once in a while--"

Vince cuffed his shoulder. "Shut your face. _Look_."

Stuart squinted off into the distance. "It's a pick-up truck," he said colorlessly.

"So?"

"So one of us is gonna have to sit with the bloody gear-shift between his  
legs-- that'd be you-- and the other'll be treated to a majestic view of  
the twilight sky through the impressive gaps between the driver's teeth."

"You'd rather walk another ten miles?"

"I'd rather walk, full stop. The Ministry of Tourism brags on the trees,  
the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains. They never mention that Canada's greatest  
natural resource is functional psychotics."

"They're trying to discourage immigration," Vince said sagely. "You must've  
greased every palm from here to the International Date Line."

"Fuck off."

"Fuck off yourself," said Vince. "You're just as sick of walking as I am."  
He dropped his bag on the ground and stationed himself so that the driver  
would have to swerve around him or run him down if he didn't want to stop.  
"How long've I known you? An eternity. Still you can't bear to have me thinking  
you have any feelings at all."

By now the driver had to've seen Vince, but he wasn't slowing down.

"Get off the road, you twat. He's not gonna stop," said Stuart.

"He _will_."

The truck screeched to a stop less than a foot away from where Vince was  
standing. It was a rusted-out Ford, blue, exactly the sort of vehicle you'd  
be driving if you were on your way to dispose of a corpse you weren't meant  
to have. Even with the windows up and the door shut, Vince could hear the  
stereo, playing country music loudly enough to shake the ground beneath his  
feet, loudly enough to make him fear for the structural integrity of his  
internal organs.

The driver himself was illuminated only by the dim light from his dashboard.  
It fanned the flames of Vince's imagination, till the driver looked even  
more like an inbred psychotic than he probably was. He grinned at Vince in  
the darkness, revealing at least six rows of healthy teeth. _The better to  
eat me with_.

"Go on, then," Stuart said maliciously. "Ask him for a lift."

"It's ten _miles_, Stuart," said Vince, creeping toward the driver's window.

The driver turned down the stereo before he rolled down the window; it gave Vince hope. "What the hell happened to _you_, buddy?"

"Engine trouble," said Vince. "Nice truck. Really, it's really nice. I've  
never seen a dashboard hula _Jesus _before. You expect a hula _girl_, or a _normal_

Jesus, but there he is, playing a ukulele, shaking his naughty bits in a  
grass skirt. It's quite remarkable."

"And you'll go on remarking till we're _all_ dead," Stuart muttered.

"Shut your face," said Vince.

"My mom makes them," said the driver. "She does them personal, too. She did hula Jesus with a rifle for the Gun Club."

It took every ounce of will that Vince possessed not to ask where he might  
buy one for himself. "You don't say?" he grinned. "We might have more in  
common than you'd think." He extended his hand. "I'm Vince, and that angry  
bloke's Stuart."

"I'm Dave."

"Nice to meet you," said Vince. "I don't suppose you'd mind driving us into town?"

  


*** *** ***  


Stuart unlocked the door to their hotel room, then stood back to let Vince  
have the first look. His plans had been only twenty minutes in the making,  
but once made, they'd cemented themselves in his mind, clear, perfect, _brilliant_,  
and absolutely irreversible. He'd sooner have castrated himself without the  
benefit of anesthesia than turned back on this now.

Vince's reaction was vital; he'd known that instantly. Anything might become  
of them now. Tensions mounting, expectations blowing up into god knew what,  
both of them terribly _moody_ people, in their own ways, only seldom landing  
on the same page when all was said and done. This was it, he'd crossed this  
bridge when he'd grabbed Vince the night before.

It might be fantastic, might be nothing special, might be a disaster, but  
no matter how the night turned out, he was absolutely certain of how it would  
begin, and that memory he would carry with him always, into the brightest  
twilights and the darkest dawns, into heaven and hell and a thousand places  
in between.

"Fucking _hellfire_!" Vince squeaked, backing out of the room so abruptly that  
he bumped into Stuart and the pair of them fell against the wall. He scrambled  
away just as quickly, glancing down the hallway and back through the doorway  
with deep and obvious distrust.

"Something wrong?" Stuart asked him pleasantly. "I asked for the Bridal Suite, I thought you'd appreciate it."

Vince's eyebrows shot up. "You _asked_ for that?"

"They had brochures in the lobby, I had a look while you were out retrieving  
our gear. We could've had the Prime Minister's Suite, or the Shannon Tweed  
Room, they've got one around back where Loverboy got arrested during their  
The Kid is Hot Tonight Tour-- apparently they robbed two hundred quid worth  
of lumberjack sandwiches and tried to flush the lot down the toilet--"

"You _asked_ for that." He still wouldn't turn enough to put even the doorway in his line of sight.

"Best I could do on such short notice," he said.

Vince had trouble accepting this. "You walked into a hotel lobby in a mining  
town with a population of twenty-five," he said carefully, "and _requested_  
the Bridal Suite for yourself and your male traveling companion."

"Some companion," Stuart scoffed. "Good job you've never volunteered your  
services at a convalescent home, you'd find yourself up on criminal charges  
before you finished your first round of backgammon."

Together they crossed over to the doorway and peered inside.

The Bridal Suite at the One-Horse Motor Inn was proof positive that in the wrong hands, _anything_ could be buggered up.

It had obviously been designed with style in mind somewhere in the mid-60's,  
and maintained devotedly all along, but it was less clear whether the owners  
were _trying_ for camp or it was purely incidental, the natural result of maintaining  
a room created during a time in Western Civilization when polyester was a  
miracle fabric, women wore frosted eye shadow and go-go boots, and people  
listened to Yma Sumac and Julie London without a trace of a Martini Smirk.

It had a sort of we-can-always-get-a-divorce feel to it, something between  
romance and practicality that suggested that rather than singing one another  
to sleep after the lovin', at least one half of the happy couple would rise  
from bed-- naked, and still a bit sweaty-- to have a look at the _Financial  
Times_. Undeniably, though, there was a seamy underbelly to this seamy underbelly,  
an impression of apathetic junkies performing in porn films for scandalously  
small sums of money.

The carpet, walls, and bucket chairs were all done in precisely the same  
shade of cornflower blue, but the coarse love seat near the room's only window  
was white, and the huge canopy waterbed that dominated the room-- frame to  
duvet, pillows and all-- was a particularly unappealing shade of brown.

Here and there throughout the room, red silhouettes of Cupid were pasted  
to the wall in a careless fashion which suggested that at any moment they  
might take flight, piercing the heart for real and leaving the room's occupants  
in a crumpled, bleeding heap on the floor next to the clear black plastic  
coffee table which displayed a fanned assortment of takeout menus, all of  
which advertised the only restaurant in town: Lucky Jumbo Meats and Video.

Any one of these things would've been enough to identify the room as one  
of the seven circles of hell, but there was one thing more that set it apart  
from other appalling hotel rooms, that identified it, in fact, as the appalling  
hotel room that all other appalling hotel rooms could only aspire to become,  
the vengeful _god_ of appalling hotel rooms:

The godawful painting that hung on one otherwise bare wall.

Quite apart from the general space-age bachelor-pad theme of the room, it  
was a sensitive, sepia-toned rendering of what appeared to be a topless and  
especially plump Sarah Brightman, with straightened hair and a basket of  
skunk cabbage, glancing demurely over one bare shoulder as if to say, "Yes,  
this room really _is_ quite terrifying, isn't it? But here! You can almost  
spot my nipple."

Clearly this was small comfort to Vince, who had absolutely no interest in  
spotting Sarah Brightman's nipple, and, apparently, an uncommonly violent  
reaction to ornamental bedside candelabras.

"I know what you're thinking," said Stuart. "It must've cost the earth, I  
went to all this trouble, now it's like you owe me something." Vince, very  
close now, gave him a dark look. "And you _do_," he went on. "We're on this  
fantastic trip, I've paid for practically everything, we always do whatever  
_you_ wanna do, yeah? I let you railroad me into anything, and what have you  
ever given me in return?"

"I'll pop you one in the goolies, for starters, how would you like that?"  
Vince jabbed him in the side with his elbow to bring his point home. "I dunno,  
though." He walked into the room and looked it over a bit more thoroughly  
than he had when he'd fled it at the outset. "'S sort of endearing, isn't  
it?"

He set his bag down next to the bathroom and turned around, slowly, his mood  
brightening visibly every time his gaze lit upon some new decorative atrocity.  
He grinned at Stuart then, grinned at him like a kid, and Stuart couldn't  
help grinning back. It'd taken Vince a bit to catch on, but now that he had,  
there'd be no stopping him.

"It's like, _A Clockwork Orange_," he declared. "Only it's blue, and there  
aren't any violent juvenile sex offenders about." He cocked his head at Stuart.  
"Present company excepted."

"Fuck off," Stuart said easily, brushing past Vince to fling himself down  
on the waterbed. It was a touch too warm, and the duvet was matted and worn,  
but by that time, he could've flung himself down on a _rockpile_ and he wouldn't  
have given a toss. All that mattered was that they weren't outside, they  
weren't in any obvious danger, and they weren't bloody _walking_.

The romance of walking was another of the myths that'd been blown all to hell since they'd left Manchester.

First, the endless heart-stopping adventure of a road trip-- so far, at least,  
it'd tended to be one day of endless heart-stopping adventure book-ended  
on both sides by five or six days of endless mind-numbing tedium. If he'd  
been traveling with anyone but Vince, he'd have killed them by now. If he'd been  
traveling alone, he'd have killed _himself_.

Walking was something else. People walked all the time. They walked for the  
sake of walking, they walked their children or their pets, they went out  
cruising… People went hiking, they _power_-walked in shopping centres,  
they couldn't get enough of it. When all else failed, they bought treadmills  
and walked in place.

It was all supposed to be very uplifting to the spirit, an opportunity to  
take life a little more slowly, spend some time with the eternal self, absorb  
the charming minutiae of everyday life that were so often overlooked in the  
rush to do things.

But it was like anything else, walking. Conditions didn't have to be optimal  
to make it bearable, but mile four of their journey had looked much the same  
as mile three. The cold was distracting, and once the sun had gone down,  
there was no absorbing the bloody minutiae of everyday life anymore, because  
they couldn't see a fucking thing, and anyway, Stuart preferred to think  
that frostbite and snow blindness weren't a part of _anyone's_ everyday life.

No one he cared to meet, any road.

But perhaps the various ordeals he'd suffered that day had soured his outlook.

Between the pair of them, they'd figured it out: he'd slept a little better  
than two hours, all told, before Judy'd attacked him. They'd been good hours,  
yeah, he wouldn't have traded them for the world, but they'd hardly prepared  
him for the day he'd had: carjackers and shootouts and long-distance walking,  
capped off by an exciting truck ride with Vince's new best mate, an affable bounty hunter who kept locks  
of hair from his successful arrests in a tacklebox which Stuart had been  
obliged to carry on his lap for the duration of the drive, because it was  
too valuable to leave in the back.

All that, and Stuart hadn't had a scrap to eat since the night before. It  
was a miracle that the day hadn't ended in tragedy, even _he_ could see that,  
but when he should've asked for a nice, sensible room with two nice, sensible  
beds, he'd asked for the Bridal Suite instead. It wasn't his fault; as soon  
as he'd clapped eyes on the photographs, he'd known where they'd be spending  
the night.

"Stuart, you _can't_ sleep now," Vince said. "We've got to get that cut clean."

"Just wet a washcloth and come swab me off," he mumbled, closing his eyes. "It'll keep till morning."

He came awake with a start when he felt the washcloth swiping at his throat.

"Sorry," said Vince, smiling affectionately. "Just me. Didn't mean to wake  
you." He urged Stuart's head back just that much more, wiping him off diligently.  
"I can't really tell what it looks like, in this light. If you'd just shift  
over a bit--"

Stuart snatched the washcloth out of his hand and tossed it across the room.  
"Sleep with me," he said, before Vince could even open his mouth to say something  
about Stuart's wound, or the carpet, or the rising cost of petroleum-based  
sandwich spreads.

"It's not gone seven yet," Vince protested.

"Walk on the wild side, Vince. Take a nap."

"I dunno," he said with a self-effacing smile. "It's so decadent."

"Right up there with caviar vindaloo," Stuart agreed, coaxing him onto his  
back. Vince gave in easily, letting Stuart mold him and shape him to his  
own satisfaction. He was never hard to manipulate when Stuart touched him,  
and he mightn't have been quite so tired as Stuart was, but he certainly  
wasn't in any shape to argue against doing something he wanted and needed.

Before long, Stuart was half on top of him, half curled around him, and well on his way back to sleep, blessed sleep.

"One day," Stuart said dimly, "I'm gonna ask you to sleep with me, and you're  
just gonna do it. No argument, no hesitation, no poncing about over what  
I mean exactly."

"One day," Vince replied, "I'm going to get into bed with you, and you're just going to shut your face and go to sleep."

It was hours before he woke again. He could feel it, he was so relaxed, so  
content, he barely even registered the mirror on the underside of the waterbed's  
canopy, cut in the same Cupid shape that dominated the room. He might've  
gone straight back to sleep, but Vince had left the bed some time before,  
it seemed. He was dressed in fresh clothing and seated beside the coffee  
table, tying his shoes.

"Got an assignation with the bounty hunter, have you?"

"It's nearly ten-thirty," said Vince.

Clearly this should've meant something to Stuart. It didn't. "So?"

Vince sighed. "The restaurant closes at eleven."

"_So_?"

"So you've got to _eat_ something Stuart, it's a fine line between sleek and  
consumptive. You can't be so thick as to think they've got room service in  
this place."

"Room service," Stuart said plaintively, sprawling out on his back. "Christ,  
I can't even _remember_ the last time we stopped at a hotel that had room service."

"It was three days ago," said Vince. "Calgary. And as long as we're on the  
subject, you should know that there's something sick and perverted about  
your obsession with room service which I only _pray_ I'll never understand."

"You won't," Stuart assured him. "You can't. You apologize to those room  
service blokes as if you've burned down their houses and slaughtered their  
children."

"It's _weird_, room service," said Vince. "Someone serves you in a restaurant,  
right, that's something else, you've _gone_ somewhere, you've made an effort,  
it's a _setting_. Room service, there's a bed right there, you could be standing  
there _naked_ with bloody _Indian Superman_ on the telly and suspicious objects  
on the carpet, and still they'd present your penne rosé as if you  
were pressed and polished and asking about the Bordeaux."

Stuart was intrigued. "What sort of suspicious objects?"

"Go back to sleep," Vince sighed, heading for the door, "or take a shower or  
something. I have no clue how much hot water we've got, but I tried to save  
some for you."

"Could've saved more if you'd had a bath instead," said Stuart. He knew as  
well as Vince did that the bathtub was a heart-shaped monstrosity dotted  
with ancient rubber flowers that were just ragged enough to give the impression  
of big cartoon bullet holes.

"Don't blame me when your bones shred that mattress and you drown." Vince  
walked out and slammed the door shut behind him, adding, "You bastard."

  


*** *** ***  


When Stuart emerged from the bathroom, he discovered that there was much  
more to Lucky Jumbo Meats and Video than just meats and videos. Vince had  
brought sandwiches, yeah, and bottles of what could only be something vile,  
but somehow he'd managed to track down several large candles as well, big  
yellow candles in quaint clay pots.

These he'd placed in strategic locations throughout the room so that it was  
possible to get around without having to make use of the obnoxious overhead  
light. Now the room looked merely seedy rather than absolutely horrible,  
a soft focus sort of effect.

He'd switched on the telly, forsaking what few poxy channels were on offer  
in favor of something that captivated Stuart's attention completely while  
he tried to identify it and accept it: it appeared to be a closed-circuit  
view of the front door to the hotel. Inexplicably, this image was accompanied  
by the soothing sound of soft-rock favorites.

Stuart cast Vince an uncertain look. "Is that--"

"The Front Door Channel, yeah." At the very least, he sounded suitably mortified.  
"It's the daftest thing I've ever seen. Still, the music's…" Vince's  
voice trailed off when the music swelled in the background, the soaring finale  
to "Caribbean Queen". "Well," he said, his tone rich with mortification.  
"The music's dreadful, isn't it? But it was that, Country Music Television,  
something called _Neon Rider_, or _this_."

He switched off the telly, and for an instant, all Stuart heard was a perfect,  
welcome silence, but then he caught it, the precise reason why Vince looked  
so bleak and violated: the blokes in the room across the hall-- each of them  
one shot short of alcohol poisoning-- were _yodeling_.

And it wasn't the comical, e-i-e-i-o sort of yodeling which people sang in  
the interests of _rubbishing_ genuine yodeling, that would've been damning  
enough. This _was_ genuine yodeling, an art that had been lost for countless  
good reasons, revived for a drunken one-night engagement.

Vince switched the telly on again before Stuart was forced to beg him to do it.

He might've been more appreciative of all that Vince had done to improve  
the room, ineffectual though it was, but at the only possible moment during  
which he could've salvaged Vince's pride and set the night off to a respectable  
start, he realized what was bugging him about the candles.

It was the scent, there was something about it that was familiar to him,  
something he'd always associated with bruised vanity, unfortunate ointments,  
and painful itching: they were citronella candles, he realized.

With that realization came the grin that infuriated Vince without fail, the  
grin, he was sure, which had led Vince to call him a right fucking bastard,  
out of nowhere. He couldn't help it, though, didn't even try. Anyone who  
burned citronella candles for mood lighting _deserved_ a good, sound bollocking,  
and if it was Stuart's lot to deliver that bollocking, then deliver it he  
would.

"I've heard that the mosquitoes are unusually large in this part of the world,"  
he said, "but I never imagined that they were big enough to carry off a grown  
man."

"It was all they had," Vince grumbled.

"No, no, don't get upset, I'm quite excited about this," Stuart went on.  
"We could open a ranch up here, hire out tame mosquitoes to take tourists  
on trips through the mountains."

"Stuart. Fuck off."

He couldn't make much of Vince's expression in the relative darkness, but  
there was no mistaking his tone. He was even more embarrassed about the candles  
than he was about the Front Door Channel, and rightly so.

He was embarrassed about having bought _any_ candles, embarrassed that they  
were citronella candles, probably even embarrassed for having bought so _many_\--  
eight of the bloody things, like he was one of those sad schizophrenic blokes  
Stuart had seen on a documentary once, filled with the absolute conviction  
that they needed all four hundred of the laminated placemats they'd robbed  
from some manky department store.

It wouldn't take much now to put him off; one false move and he'd be calling the front desk to request a camp bed.

"It's lovely," Stuart said quietly, placing a gentle kiss on Vince's cheek.  
"Honestly. Between the mosquito repellent and your deft marksmanship, I've  
never felt safer."

Vince turned sharply, as if to leave Stuart standing there, as if to stomp  
off as he so often did, fed up with Stuart and beyond caring how he felt  
about it, but at the last second, he seemed to think better of it. He turned  
back to Stuart and opened his mouth to say something further, something grim  
and furious, it was right there in his eyes, but he made a fatal mistake:  
in the interest of coming up with something really nasty, he looked Stuart  
up and down.

It was only then, apparently, that he noticed that Stuart was naked.

"Oh my _god_," he said, covering his eyes with his hands. "Four thousand bags  
of clothes, and _still_ you can never find a pair of trousers."

Stuart smirked. "Only 'cause you're always robbing them for your collection  
of Folded Things." He reached out and tried to pull Vince's hands away, but  
Vince was that much quicker. "Vince, for fuck's sake, it's nothing you haven't  
seen before."

Vince ignored him. "I left them where I found them," he defended. Stuart's  
trousers had been crumpled on the floor next to a chair; now they were folded  
neatly on the chair itself. "Or rather close by."

"That's for camping, Vince," Stuart said with exquisite condescension. "But  
I suppose this explains your colorful shirts and your passion for open flames."

"_Camping_," he said heavily. "I'm going to have a heart attack."

"The One-Horse Motor Inn," said Stuart, making another failed play for Vince's  
hands. "If the man-made fibers don't kill you, one of our guests surely will."

"Listen, Stuart… I want you to understand something, it's important,  
it's--" He shook his head and took his hands away from his face. He tried  
to look at Stuart, but his hands twitched, as if they were seconds away from  
covering his eyes again, and his gaze was fixed on an ambiguous stain on  
the carpet. "God, I'm so _sad_," he said, scowling.

Stuart got in close, so close that they were almost pressed together, backing  
Vince up against the wall to cut off every avenue of escape. His plan was  
a simple one: if Vince was to be distracted by Stuart's nudity now, first  
he'd have to make a sincere effort to see it. It was head and shoulders or  
the rest of the room. Now he'd either start talking or abandon any attempt  
to speak at all; either one would be a blessing for them both.

"Stuart," he said in a soft, soft voice, stroking Stuart's cheek with the  
back of his hand. "Think about what's happened to us today. You'll tell people  
all about it, no matter where we go from here, our _first time_, right? _Imagine_  
telling someone. We started out all right, bit of sniping, nothing extraordinary,  
but then you fell asleep and I picked up a carjacker."

He nuzzled Stuart's ear, murmuring, "A crazy carjacker with a machete in  
her handbag. It was only a hunting knife and a shopping bag, but it'll be  
a machete when you tell it, won't it?" Stuart tilted his head to give Vince  
better access to his neck, and Vince took full advantage, kissing his jaw,  
stroking his throat. His touch was so hesitant now, so reverent, and yet  
so _sure_, it made Stuart shiver.

"Vince."

"Shh," he said, easing one arm around Stuart's waist. "She took you hostage,  
wasn't enough to nick the car, she wanted to wind me up a bit. So she teased  
you with the knife, said a lot of scary things." He smiled in the darkness.  
"But she fucked with the wrong blokes."

Stuart traced the buttons of Vince's shirt with one hand, flicked a few open  
around the middle, slid a hand inside. Vince gasped. "_Such_ a twat," Stuart  
said.

"I'm getting to that bit," Vince said hoarsely, eyes squeezed shut while Stuart pinched his nipple.

"Vince…" he sighed, straining closer. Vince held him at bay.

"We started scrapping, right, I was mortified, you were pissed off. Both  
of us off our heads. You started shouting at me, saying all-sorts. I got  
out of the car. What strange force compelled me, after all that? You might  
never know. But she let you out as well, and just when you thought the whole  
sorry situation was a complete cock-up, I produced the gun and shot out one  
of the tires on the Jeep. Seemed like a good idea till the car got smashed.  
Still, it can be fixed, and we have all our gear.

"We sorted it out, started walking. Miracle of miracles, someone picked us  
up only ten miles in, drove us to town. He was a bit strange, yeah, and maybe  
he had a taste for human flesh, but at least he didn't tell us about it."

Now he released Stuart, reluctantly, and crossed his arms over his chest.  
"Then we checked into some utterly forgettable hotel room and shagged like  
rabbits. The end."

"Vince," he said, shaking his head, "we could leave right now and you wouldn't forget this hotel room."

"That isn't the point," he said. "It's _romantic_, this. Making the best of  
a bad situation. And you did the same bloody thing _I_ did. I know you think  
I'm pathetic, I know you were only taking the piss, I'm not _stupid_, but now,  
when you tell this story, it'll have a nice finish." He wrinkled his nose.  
"Or a comical one, depending on how you decide to tell it."

Stuart closed the distance between them, pressed himself up against Vince,  
wrapped around him. "I wasn't taking the piss," he murmured, his mouth only  
a fraction apart from Vince's. "And I'm not gonna tell anyone."

Vince looked stunned. "Oh."

They were both on the simmer, but for the time being, it seemed Vince was  
as content as Stuart to just tread water, savor the moment, let it gain its  
own momentum. It was odd, this. Vince grew more and more relaxed, eyes darkening,  
muscles loosening, but Stuart was quite the reverse, fairly crackling with  
energy.

Vince slid one hand down to cup Stuart's arse, the other up around the back  
of his neck, fitting Stuart against him as if he'd done it hundreds of times.  
Stuart supposed he had, if in a slightly different context. They'd always  
enjoyed dancing together.

"Everyone's going to know anyway," Vince said eventually. "That lot don't miss a trick."

"Everyone's gonna _guess_," said Stuart. "_Fuck_ them, they'll think what they  
like. Hearts and flowers, whips and chains, who gives a toss?" He gave Vince  
a speculative look. "Did you _want_ me to tell?"

"Maybe a little," he said eventually.

"You of all people should know, it's nothing, shagging me. I've had _everyone_. How many men have had you?"

"Three," said Vince. "Two, actually. I had one of them twice."

"I'll make you forget them both," Stuart purred.

"Big man."

When they kissed again, it was nothing like it'd been before, frantic, like the plane was going down.

Stuart took his time with Vince, and Vince let him, now, moving against him  
languidly, moaning low in his throat, his urgency burned away and replaced  
by deep and abiding need. Stuart nipped at his mouth, sucked on his tongue,  
licked his lips, and Vince gave it all back, making no move to take it further,  
not even to strip off his own clothing.

"Mm, you're fantastic," said Stuart, kissing him again.

Vince's knees buckled, and he slid down the wall, taking Stuart with him.  
When they hit the floor, Stuart straddled his hips, taking his mouth again,  
grinding against him. Working the last of Vince's buttons free, he parted  
the shirt wide, half down his shoulders. Then he got to work on Vince's trousers.

"Stuart," Vince gasped. "We can't shag _here_."

Stuart yanked Vince's belt free and tossed it over his shoulder. "We can."

"There's a bed right there."

"It's _brown_. Lift up." Vince obliged him, and Stuart bared him to his thighs.  
The sight stopped him dead. "Oh, _look_ at you," he breathed.

"Piss off."

"No, _look_."

There he was, looking like he had dishonorable intentions. He was completely  
disheveled, his head thrown back against the wall, his hair sticking up even  
more than usual, eyes dark, lips swollen, the shadow of a beard along his  
jaw, chest gleaming with sweat, his cock hard and straining… Gone  
was the buttoned-up, buttoned-down Vince that Stuart always known; this was his  
secret identity.

Having looked, as bidden, Vince looked up at Stuart and grinned. "Blimey."

"Fucking _fantastic_." Stuart took Vince's cock in hand, and Vince twisted  
up into his fist, moaning his name. "Easy," Stuart soothed, wanking him slowly,  
licking his throat. "Where's your bag?"

"Dunno," he said miserably. Between Stuart and the position of his clothing,  
he was helpless to do much of anything but take what he was given. "Miles away."

Stuart cast a quick look around the room, finally spotting Vince's bag sitting  
next to the coffee table. He climbed to his feet slowly, cold suddenly after  
soaking up so much of Vince's warmth.

"Don't move," he said, striding across the room to Vince's bag.

"Stuart--"

"I mean it," he said. "Don't you go shucking your trousers or something. I want you just like that."

After what seemed like an age, Stuart found Vince's condoms and lube-- both  
in economy size, though whether out of optimism or frugality, Stuart didn't  
care to consider-- and returned to him, straddling his hips again.

"I _can't_ move," Vince complained.

Stuart dragged his tongue along the column of Vince's throat, provoking a  
whimper when it ended in a wet kiss. "I'll give you one hand," he said. "Which  
is it to be?"

Vince rolled his eyes. "Surprise me."

Stuart freed Vince's left arm. "Here," he said, prodding Vince with the lubricant tube. "Slick me up."

Vince looked down at the tube, swallowing carefully. "I, um--"

"For fuck's _sake_, Vince," he said, grabbing Vince's hand and squirting lube on his palm, "Make a decision."

"I _have_," he said. "It's just--" He looked up at Stuart with anguished eyes. "I can't--"

He kissed Vince again, slow and deep. "It's all right," he said with a crooked  
smile when he was done. "It's all right. We'll start slow, yeah?"

He took Vince's hand and wrapped around his cock, stroking himself tightly,  
slowly. He held himself back, kept still, kept quiet, let Vince take control.  
It was powerfully sexy to him, this, both of them restrained, one way or  
another, Vince exploring him so tentatively, like he was half-afraid he'd  
make a hash of it, half-amazed that he _could_ make a hash of it. Before long,  
Vince was improvising, squeezing when he felt like it, getting a bit rougher  
when Stuart urged him into it.

He was perfect, attentive, responsive, he wanked Stuart off as if he knew  
what Stuart wanted before Stuart knew it himself, that strange telepathy  
they shared finally put to some practical use. He made no attempt to free  
himself, to pull Stuart closer. He wanted to watch, Stuart knew, he'd always  
stared at Stuart like he was one of the really brilliant wonders of the world.  
Now there was so much more to see, and he was taking it all in with greedy,  
lustful eyes.

The pleasure Stuart felt was so keen it was almost prickly, it sent off sparks  
inside him, partly, he knew, the result of having been teased nearly to this  
point twice already that day without any sort of resolution, but he didn't  
care, he'd have it now, he would, Vince had stepped over the line, was wanking  
him off with an authority that Stuart hadn't even guessed at.

"Vince," he gasped, thrusting harder. "Ohh…"

"Christ," Vince growled, his touch just shy of brutal now. "You're killing  
me. No bloody wonder I didn't think to touch you, I must've known I'd have  
to pack a lunch."

Stuart grinned and held on, matching Vince's pace, moaning loudly with each  
snap of his hips. He could've lasted an age, as long as he liked, practically,  
though not without some cost to his peace of mind. Vince, though. Vince was  
straining beneath him, not so far from coming, himself, and Stuart wasn't  
helping, didn't want to. He let his head fall back, let his eyes drift shut,  
let his back arch each time he bucked into Vince's hand. He knew exactly  
how he looked, like that; he'd seen it dozens of times. It was Vince who'd  
never seen it before.

"_Bastard_."

Stuart plunged his hand into Vince's hair and pulled him forward, kissing him hotly. "Slick me up."

Vince blinked at him. "Okay." As soon as he let go of Stuart's cock, Stuart  
began stroking it himself, laughing softly at Vince's expression, all lust  
and disgust. Somehow Vince overcame it and held out his free hand for more  
lube. "Let's have it, then."

"You want the other one free as well?" Stuart gasped.

"_You_ want the other one free, you slut."

"Have it your way." He squirted lube onto Vince's palm and shifted up a bit to give him better access.

"_My_ way? I'll tell you a little something about my way, Stuart, it…"  
he trailed off when his fingers slid inside Stuart slowly, so slowly, and  
Stuart stilled, sighing, waiting for Vince to get all the way in, as far  
as he could go, just far enough. When Vince's fingers brushed against his  
prostate, he broke out in a sweat, shuddering, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Oh my _god_," Vince breathed.

"Vince, stop," he said, beyond stopping himself.

Vince kept stroking him, bending his head to take one of Stuart's nipples  
in his mouth, biting it sharply before he soothed it with his tongue.

"I mean it, Vince," Stuart gasped, "I'm gonna come."

"Serve you right if you did," he said, licking Stuart's collarbone, but he let him go.

Stuart snatched up  
a condom and tore it open, rolling it down Vince's cock. "Last chance," he  
said mockingly, meeting Vince's eyes. "It's not sex if you don't come."

"Who's to say I will?" Vince said. "I'm not that bothered, actually."

Stuart braced himself against Vince's shoulders and started easing himself  
down onto Vince's cock. He'd as good as promised to take it slow, and he'd  
fully intended to follow through, but Vince bucked up hard, shoved all the  
way in, arching up and moaning low in his throat.

"This is what happens when you give a gun to the wrong sort of person," Stuart gasped delightedly. "They get all _tough_ on you."

Vince wrenched his other arm free and grabbed Stuart's hips, putting him  
exactly where he wanted him, shoving him up and yanking him down, hard and  
fast. Stuart rocked with him, let Vince take him wherever he wanted to go,  
because Vince was perfect, Vince was fantastic, Vince really knew how to  
make the best of a bad situation.

He hardly seemed aware of Stuart now, so lost was he in sensation, he just  
kept working his hips and Stuart's as if they all belonged to him. Then he  
said, "Kiss me," only that, but it was so earnest, so desperate…

Stuart bent to kiss him, made a meal of him, really, growling into his mouth,  
sucking on it, nipping at his lips, but his change in position was a change  
in position for Vince as well, and he began to thrust still deeper, still  
faster, till even kissing was beyond them both.

Vince came first, stiffening beneath Stuart and arching against the wall,  
running with sweat and moaning like mad, and it did Stuart in as well. He  
clutched Vince close as spasm after spasm wracked him, stealing his breath  
away, making him see stars. When it was over, they just lay like that for  
a bit, catching their breaths, Vince crushed against the wall with his arms  
looped loosely around Stuart's waist, stroking his back, Stuart draped over him bonelessly, kissing his neck.

Then someone started thumping on the door.

"Who the hell is that?" Stuart demanded.

"The _yodelers_," said Vince, awed. "Oh my _god_, we've disturbed the _yodelers_."

They started giggling, and kept on doing till the irate yodeler finally  
gave up on them and left. The moment might've turned awkward, then; Vince  
might've taken note of their situation, their surroundings, and become deeply  
embarrassed about it all. Stuart might've taken note of that look on Vince's  
face, open adoration, complete devotion, and assumed, correctly, that it  
was already far too late to be thinking of fleeing him.

But they kissed again, in open defiance of the yodelers, they kissed as if  
they'd only just gotten started, and when they parted, finally, Vince grinned  
up at Stuart, goofily, and said, "So, what d'you fancy doing tomorrow?"  



End file.
